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REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 




Burnham ind Commissioner \rn sci n I i \ s I 

priest Umlimo. 



REAL SOLDIERS OF 
FORTUNE 



BY 

RICHARD HARDING DAVIS 



ILLUSTRATED 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
1906 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 

NOV 23 (906 

■_ Copyright Entry . 

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CUSS A XXtf, No 
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V 



Copyright, 1906, by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



Published, November, 1906 



TRO* OlWCTO*T 
INTINO »i»D ■OOKWIMM COMPANT 



CONTENTS 



i 

PAGE 

Major-General Henry Ronald Douglas MacIver i 



II 

Baron James Harden-Hickey . . * . . 32 ^ 

III 
Winston Spencer Churchill 75 

IV 
Captain Philo Norton McGiffin .... 120 

V 

General William Walker, the King of the 

Filibusters 145 ^ 

VI 

Major Burnham, Chief of Scouts . . . . 191 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



BlTRNHAM AND COMMISSIONER ARMSTRONG ESCAPING AFTER 

Shooting the High-Priest Umlimo . . . Frontispiece 



MacIver in the Uniform of the Mexican Empire 

Brevet Bestowing the Cross of Takova on General 
MacIver by the Servian Government 

MacIver as General of Brigade in Servian Uniform 

Major-General Henry Ronald Douglas MacIver as He 
Is To-day 



FACING 
PAGE 

16 



The Island of Trinidad, off the Coast of Brazil 

Topographical Map of the Island of Trinidad 

The Order of the Cross of Trinidad 

Baron Harden-Hickey, King James I of Trinidad 

Winston Churchill in the Uniform of the Fourth 
Queen's Own Hussars, at the Age of Twenty-one, 
When He Fought with the Spaniards 

Winston Churchill in the Uniform of Lieutenant of 
South African Light Horse . 

Winston Churchill as War Correspondent in South 
Africa at the Time of His Capture .... 



26 

28 

30 
42 

44 
54 
72 

76 
92 
98 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



FACING 
PAGE 

Winston Churchill Landing prom the Steamer "Induna" 

at Durban after His Escape from the Boer Prison . 108 

Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, British Under- 
Secretary for the Colonies 118 

Captain McGiffin on Graduation from the Naval Acad- 
emy at Twenty-three 128 

McGiffin as Superintendent of the Chinese Naval Col- 
lege, at the Age of Thirty-two 140 

Captain McGiffin in Hospital after the Battle of the 
Yalu — Showing Damage to Clothes due to Concus- 
sion 142 

General William Walker 146 

Routes of Walker's Three Filibustering Expeditions . 188 

Major F. R. Burnham; Taken on the Day the King 

Decorated Him with the D. S. 228 

Latest Portrait of Burnham; Taken this Year in Mexico 

by a Member of His Expedition 232 



via 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 



MAJOR-GENERAL HENRY RONALD DOUGLAS 
MACIVER 

ANY sunny afternoon, on Fifth Avenue, 
or at night in the table d'hote res- 
taurants of University Place, you may meet 
the soldier of fortune who of all his brothers 
in arms now living is the most remarkable. 
You may have noticed him ; a stiffly erect, dis- 
tinguished-looking man, with gray hair, an 
imperial of the fashion of Louis Napoleon, 
fierce blue eyes, and across his forehead a 
sabre cut. 

This is Henry Ronald Douglas Maclver, for 
some time in India an ensign in the Sepoy 
mutiny; in Italy, lieutenant under Garibaldi; 
in Spain, captain under Don Carlos; in our 
Civil War, major in the Confederate army; 
in Mexico, lieutenant-colonel under the Em- 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

peror Maximilian; colonel under Napoleon 
III, inspector of cavalry for the Khedive of 
Egypt, and chief of cavalry and general of 
brigade of the army of King Milan of Servia. 
These are only a few of his military titles. In 
1884 was published a book giving the story 
of his life up to that year. It was called " Un- 
der Fourteen Flags." If to-day General Mac- 
Iver were to reprint the book, it would be 
called " Under Eighteen Flags." 

Maclver was born on Christmas Day, 1841, 
at sea, a league off the shore of Virginia. His 
mother was Miss Anna Douglas of that State ; 
Ronald Maclver, his father, was a Scot, a 
Ross-shire gentleman, a younger son of the 
chief of the Clan Maclver. Until he was ten 
years old young Maclver played in Virginia 
at the home of his father. Then, in order 
that he might be educated, he was shipped to 
Edinburgh to an uncle, General Donald Gra- 
ham. After five years his uncle obtained for 
him a commission as ensign in the Honourable 
East India Company, and at sixteen, when 
other boys are preparing for college, Mac- 
lver was in the Indian Mutiny, fighting, not 
for a flag, nor a country, but as one fights a 



MAJOR-GENERAL MACIVER 

wild animal, for his life. He was wounded 
in the arm, and, with a sword, cut over the 
head. As a safeguard against the sun the 
boy had placed inside his helmet a wet towel. 
This saved him to fight another day, but even 
with that protection the sword sank through 
the helmet, the towel, and into the skull. To- 
day you can see the scar. He was left in the 
road for dead, and even after his wounds had 
healed, was six weeks in the hospital. 

This rough handling at the very start might 
have satisfied some men, but in the very next 
war Maclver was a volunteer and wore the 
red shirt of Garibaldi. He remained at the 
front throughout that campaign, and until 
within a few years there has been no cam- 
paign of consequence in which he has not 
taken part. He served in the Ten Years' 
War in Cuba, in Brazil, in Argentina, in 
Crete, in Greece, twice in Spain in Carlist 
revolutions, in Bosnia, and for four years in 
our Civil War under Generals Jackson and 
Stuart around Richmond. In this great war 
he was four times wounded. 

It was after the surrender of the Confed- 
erate Army, that, with other Southern officers, 

3 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

he served under Maximilian in Mexico; in 
Egypt, and in France. Whenever in any part 
of the world there was fighting, or the rumor 
of fighting, the procedure of the general in- 
variably was the same. He would order him- 
self to instantly depart for the front, and on 
arriving there would offer to organize a for- 
eign legion. The command of this organiza- 
tion always was given to him. But the for- 
eign legion was merely the entering wedge. 
He would soon show that he was fitted for a 
better command than a band of undisciplined 
volunteers, and would receive a commission 
in the regular army. In almost every com- 
mand in which he served that is the manner 
in which promotion came. Sometimes he saw 
but little fighting, sometimes he should have 
died several deaths, each of a nature more 
unpleasant than the others. For in war the 
obvious danger of a bullet is but a three hun- 
dred to one shot, while in the pack against 
the combatant the jokers are innumerable. 
And in the career of the general the unfore- 
seen adventures are the most interesting. A 
man who in eighteen campaigns has played 
his part would seem to have earned exemption 

4 



MAJOR-GENERAL MACIVER 

from any other risks, but often it was outside 
the battle-field that Maclver encountered the 
greatest danger. He fought several duels, in 
two of which he killed his adversary; several 
attempts were made to assassinate him, and 
while on his way to Mexico he was captured 
by hostile Indians. On returning from an ex- 
pedition in Cuba he was cast adrift in an open 
boat and for days was without food. 

Long before I met General Maclver I had 
read his book and had heard of him from 
many men who had met him in many differ- 
ent lands while engaged in as many different 
undertakings. Several of the older war corre- 
spondents knew him intimately; Bennett Bur- 
leigh of the Telegraph was his friend, and 
E. F. Knight of the Times was one of those 
who volunteered for a filibustering expedition 
which Maclver organized against New Guinea. 
The late Colonel Ochiltree of Texas told me 
tales of Maclver's bravery, when as young 
men they were fellow officers in the Southern 
Army, and Stephen Bonsai had met him when 
Maclver was United States Consul at Denia in 
Spain. When Maclver arrived at this post, the 
ex-consul refused to vacate the Consulate, and 

s 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

Maclver wished to settle the difficulty with 
duelling pistols. As Denia is a small place, 
the inhabitants feared for their safety, and 
Bonsai, who was our charge d'affaires then, 
was sent from Madrid to adjust matters. 
Without bloodshed he got rid of the ex-consul, 
and later Maclver so endeared himself to the 
Denians that they begged the State Depart- 
ment to retain him in that place for the re- 
mainder of his life. 

Before General Maclver was appointed to 
a high position at the St. Louis Fair, I saw 
much of him in New York. His room was 
in a side street in an old-fashioned boarding- 
house, and overlooked his neighbors' backyard 
and a typical New York City sumac tree; but 
when the general talked one forgot he was 
within a block of the Elevated, and roamed 
over all the world. On his bed he would 
spread out wonderful parchments, with 
strange, heathenish inscriptions, with great 
seals, with faded ribbons. These were signed 
by Sultans, Secretaries of War, Emperors, 
filibusters. They were military commissions, 
titles of nobility, brevets for decorations, in- 
structions and commands from superior offi- 

6 



MAJOR-GENERAL MACIVER 

cers. Translated the phrases ran : " Impos- 
ing special confidence in," " we appoint," or 
" create," or " declare," or " In recognition of 
services rendered to our person," or " coun- 
try," or " cause," or " For bravery on the field 
of battle we bestow the Cross " 

As must a soldier, the general travels 
" light," and all his worldly possessions were 
crowded ready for mobilization into a small 
compass. He had his sword, his field blanket, 
his trunk, and the tin despatch boxes that held 
his papers. From these, like a conjurer, he 
would draw souvenirs of all the world. From 
the embrace of faded letters, he would unfold 
old photographs, daguerreotypes, and minia- 
tures of fair women and adventurous men: 
women who now are queens in exile, men who, 
lifted on waves of absinthe, still, across a cafe 
table, tell how they will win back a crown. 

Once in a written document the general did 
me the honor to appoint me his literary execu- 
tor, but as he is young, and as healthy as my- 
self, it never may be my lot to perform such an 
unwelcome duty. And to-day all one can 
write of him is what the world can read in 
"Under Fourteen Flags," and some of the 

7 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

" foot-notes to history " which I have copied 
from his scrap-book. This scrap-book is a 
wonderful volume, but owing to " political " 
and other reasons, for the present, of the many 
clippings from newspapers it contains there 
are only a few I am at liberty to print. And 
from them it is difficult to make a choice. To 
sketch in a few thousand words a career that 
had developed under Eighteen Flags is in its 
very wealth embarrassing. 

Here is one story, as told by the scrap-book, 
of an expedition that failed. That it failed 
was due to a British Cabinet Minister ; for had 
Lord Derby possessed the imagination of the 
Soldier of Fortune, his Majesty's dominions 
might now be the richer by many thousands 
of square miles and many thousands of black 
subjects. 

On October 29, 1883, the following ap- 
peared in the London Standard: "The New 
Guinea Exploration and Colonization Com- 
pany is already chartered, and the first expe- 
dition expects to leave before Christmas." 
" The prospectus states settlers intending to 
join the first party must contribute one hun- 
dred pounds toward the company. This sub- 



MAJOR-GENERAL MACIVER 

scription will include all expenses for passage 
money. Six months' provisions will be pro- 
vided, together with tents and arms for pro- 
tection. Each subscriber of one hundred 
pounds is to obtain a certificate entitling him 
to one thousand acres/' 

The view of the colonization scheme taken 
by the Times of London, of the same date, is 
less complaisant. " The latest commercial 
sensation is a proposed company for the seizure 
of New Guinea. Certain adventurous gentle- 
men are looking out for one hundred others 
who have money and a taste for buccaneer- 
ing. When the company has been completed, 
its shareholders are to place themselves under 
military regulations, sail in a body for New 
Guinea, and without asking anybody's leave, 
seize upon the island and at once, in some 
unspecified way, proceed to realize large prof- 
its. If the idea does not suggest compari- 
sons with the large designs of Sir Francis 
Drake, it is at least not unworthy of Cap- 
tain Kidd." 

When we remember the manner in which 
some of the colonies of Great Britain were 
acquired, the Times seems almost squeamish. 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

In a Melbourne paper, June, 1884, * s tne 
following paragraph: 

" Toward the latter part of 1883 the Government of 
Queensland planted the flag of Great Britain on the 
shores of New Guinea. When the news reached Eng- 
land it created a sensation. The Earl of Derby, Sec- 
retary for the Colonies, refused, however, to sanction 
the annexation of New Guinea, and in so doing acted 
contrary to the sincere wish of every right-thinking 
Anglo-Saxon under the Southern Cross. 

" While the subsequent correspondence between the 
Home and Queensland governments was going on, 
Brigadier-General H. R. Maclver originated and or- 
ganized the New Guinea Exploration and Colonization 
Company, in London, with a view to establishing set- 
tlements on the island. The company, presided over 
by General Beresford of the British Army, and having 
an eminently representative and influential board of 
directors, had a capital of two hundred and fifty thou- 
sand pounds, and placed the supreme command of 
the expedition in the hands of General Maclver. Not- 
withstanding the character of the gentlemen compos- 
ing the board of directors, and the truly peaceful 
nature of the expedition, his Lordship informed Gen- 
eral Maclver that in the event of the latter's attempt- 
ing to land on New Guinea, instructions would be 
sent to the officer in command of her Majesty's fleet 
in the Western Pacific to fire upon the company's 
vessel. This meant that the expedition would be dealt 
with as a filibustering one." 

In Judy, September 21, 1SS7, appears: 



MAJOR-GENERAL MACIVER 

" We all recollect the treatment received by Briga- 
dier-General Mad. in the action he took with respect 
to the annexation of New Guinea. The General, who 
is a sort of Pizarro, with a dash of DArtagnan, was 
treated in a most scurvy manner by Lord Derby. Had 
Maclver not been thwarted in his enterprise, the whole 
of New Guinea would now have been under the British 
flag, and we should not be cheek-by- jowl with the 
Germans, as we are in too many places." 

Society, September 3, 1887, says: 

" The New Guinea expedition proved abortive, ow- 
ing to the blundering shortsightedness of the then 
Government, for which Lord Derby was chiefly re- 
sponsible, but what little foothold we possess in New 
Guinea is certainly due to General Maclver's gallant 
effort." 

Copy of statement made by J. Rintoul 
Mitchell, June 2, 1887: 

" About the latter end of the year 1883, when I was 
editor-in-chief of the Englishman in Calcutta, I was 
told by Captain de Deaux, assistant secretary in the 
Foreign Office of the Indian Government, that he had 
received a telegram from Lord Derby to the effect 
that if General Maclver ventured to land upon the 
coast of New Guinea it would become the duty of 
Lord Ripon, Viceroy, to use the naval forces at his 
command for the purpose of deporting General MacL 
Sir Aucland Calvin can certify to this, as it was dis- 
cussed in the Viceregal Council." 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

Just after our Civil War Maclver was in- 
terested in another expedition which also 
failed. Its members called themselves the 
Knights of Arabia, and their object was to 
colonize an island much nearer to our shores 
than New Guinea. Maclver, saying that his 
oath prevented, would never tell me which 
island this was, but the reader can choose from 
among Cuba, Haiti, and the Hawaiian group. 
To have taken Cuba, the " colonizers " would 
have had to fight not only Spain, but the Cu- 
bans themselves, on whose side they were soon 
fighting in the Ten Years' War ; so Cuba may 
be eliminated. And as the expedition was to 
sail from the Atlantic side, and not from San 
Francisco, the island would appear to be the 
Black Republic. From the records of the 
times it would seem that the greater number 
of the Knights of Arabia were veterans of the 
Confederate Army, and there is no question 
but that they intended to subjugate the blacks 
of Haiti and form a republic for white men, 
in which slavery would be recognized. As one 
of the leaders of this filibustering expedition, 
Maclver was arrested by General Phil Sheri- 
dan and for a short time cast into jail. This 



MAJOR-GENERAL MACIVER 

chafed the General's spirit, but he argued 
philosophically that imprisonment for filibus- 
tering, while irksome, brought with it no re- 
proach. And, indeed, sometimes the only dif- 
ference between a filibuster and a government 
lies in the fact that the government fights the 
gunboats of only the enemy while a filibuster 
must dodge the boats of the enemy and those 
of his own countrymen. When the United 
States went to war with Spain there were 
many men in jail as filibusters, for doing that 
which at the time the country secretly ap- 
proved, and later imitated. And because they 
attempted exactly the same thing for which 
Dr. Jameson was imprisoned in Holloway 
Jail, two hundred thousand of his countrymen 
are now wearing medals. 

The by-laws of the Knights of Arabia leave 
but little doubt as to its object. 

By-law No. II reads: 

" We, as Knights of Arabia, pledge ourselves to 
aid, comfort, and protect all Knights of Arabia, espe- 
cially those who are wounded in obtaining our grand 
object. 

" III — Great care must be taken that no unbeliever 
or outsider shall gain any insight into the mysteries 
or secrets of the Order. 

13 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

" IV — The candidate will have to pay one hundred 
dollars cash to the Captain of the Company, and the 
candidate will receive from the Secretary a Knight of 
Arabia bond for one hundred dollars in gold, with ten 
per cent interest, payable ninety days after the recog- 
nition of (The Republic of ) by the United States, 

or any government. 

" V — All Knights of Arabia will be entitled to one 
hundred acres of land, location of said land to be 
drawn for by lottery. The products are coffee, sugar, 
tobacco, and cotton." 

A local correspondent of the New York 

Herald writes of the arrest of Maclver as 

follows : 

" When Maclver will be tried is at present un- 
known, as his case has assumed a complicated aspect. 
He claims British protection as a subject of her British 
Majesty, and the English Consul has forwarded a 
statement of his case to Sir Frederick Bruce at Wash- 
ington, accompanied by a copy of the by-laws. Gen- 
eral Sheridan also has forwarded a statement to the 
Secretary of War, accompanied not only by the by- 
laws, but very important documents, including letters 
from Jefferson Davis, Benjamin, the Secretary of 
State of the Confederate States, and other personages 
prominent in the Rebellion, showing that Maclver en- 
joyed the highest confidence of the Confederacy." 

As to the last statement, an open letter I 

found in his scrap-book is an excellent proof. 

It is as follows : 

14 



MAJOR-GENERAL MACIVER 

" To officers and members of all camps of United 
Confederate Veterans: It affords me the greatest 
pleasure to say that the bearer of this letter, General 
Henry Ronald Maclver, was an officer of great gal- 
lantry in the Confederate Army, serving on the staff 
at various times of General Stonewall Jackson, J. E. 
B. Stuart, and E. Kirby Smith, and that his official 
record is one of which any man may be proud. 

" Respectfully, Marcus J. Wright, 

Agent for the Collection of Confederate Records. 

" War Records Office, War Department, Washington, July 8, 
1895." 

At the close of the war duels between offi- 
cers of the two armies were not infrequent. 
In the scrap-book there is the account of one of 
these affairs sent from Vicksburg to a North- 
ern paper by a correspondent who was an eye- 
witness of the event. It tells how Major Mac- 
lver, accompanied by Major Gillespie, met, 
just outside of Vicksburg, Captain Tomlin of 
Vermont, of the United States Artillery Vol- 
unteers. The duel was with swords. Mac- 
lver ran Tomlin through the body. The cor- 
respondent writes : 

" The Confederate officer wiped his sword on his 
handkerchief. In a few seconds Captain Tomlin ex- 
pired. One of Major Maclver's seconds called to 
him : ' He is dead ; you must go. These gentlemen 

15 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

will look after the body of their friend.' A negro 
boy brought up the horses, but before mounting Mac- 
Iver said to Captain Tomlin's seconds : ' My friends 
are in haste for me to go. Is there anything I can 
do? I hope you consider that this matter has been 
settled honorably ? ' 

" There being no reply, the Confederates rode 
away." 

In a newspaper of to-day so matter-of-fact 
an acceptance of an event so tragic would 
make strange reading. 

From the South Maclver crossed through 
Texas to join the Royalist army under the 
Emperor Maximilian. It was while making 
his way, with other Confederate officers, from 
Galveston to El Paso, that Maclver was cap- 
tured by the Indians. He was not ill-treated 
by them, but for three months was a prisoner, 
until one night, the Indians having camped 
near the Rio Grande, he escaped into Mexico. 
There he offered his sword to the Royalist 
commander, General Mejia, who placed him 
on his staff, and showed him some few skir- 
mishes. At Monterey Maclver saw big fight- 
ing, and for his share in it received the title 
of Count, and the order of Guadaloupe. In 
June, contrary to all rules of civilized war, 

16 




Maclver in the Uniform of the Mexican Empire. 



MAJOR-GENERAL MACIVER 

Maximilian was executed and the empire was 
at an end. Maclver escaped to the coast, and 
from Tampico took a sailing vessel to Rio 
de Janeiro. Two months later he was wear- 
ing the uniform of another emperor, Dom 
Pedro, and, with the rank of lieutenant-colo- 
nel, was in command of the Foreign Legion 
of the armies of Brazil and Argentina, which 
at that time as allies were fighting against 
Paraguay. 

Maclver soon recruited seven hundred men, 
but only half of these ever reached the front. 
In Buenos Ayres cholera broke out and thirty 
thousand people died, among the number about 
half the Legion. Maclver was among those 
who suffered, and before he recovered was 
six weeks in hospital. During that period, 
under a junior officer, the Foreign Legion was 
sent to the front, where it was disbanded. 

On his return to Glasgow, Maclver fore- 
gathered with an old friend, Bennett Bur- 
leigh, whom he had known when Burleigh 
was a lieutenant in the navy of the Confeder- 
ate States. Although to-day known as a dis- 
tinguished war correspondent, in those days 
Burleigh was something of a soldier of for- 

17 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

tune himself, and was organizing an expedi- 
tion to assist the Cretan insurgents against 
the Turks. Between the two men it was 
arranged that Maclver should precede the ex- 
pedition to Crete and prepare for its arrival. 
The Cretans received him gladly, and from 
the provisional government he received a com- 
mission in which he was given " full power to 
make war on land and sea against the enemies 
of Crete, and particularly against the Sultan 
of Turkey and the Turkish forces, and to 
burn, destroy, or capture any vessel bearing 
the Turkish flag." 

This permission to destroy the Turkish 
navy single-handed strikes one as more than 
generous, for the Cretans had no navy, and 
before one could begin the destruction of a 
Turkish gunboat it was first necessary to catch 
it and tie it to a wharf. 

At the close of the Cretan insurrection 
Maclver crossed to Athens and served against 
the brigands in Kisissia on the borders of 
Albania and Thessaly as volunteer aide to 
Colonel Corroneus, who had been commander- 
in-chief of the Cretans against the Turks. 
Maclver spent three months potting at brig- 

18 



MAJOR-GENERAL MACIVER 

ands, and for his services in the mountains 
was recommended for the highest Greek deco- 
ration. 

From Greece it was only a step to New 
York, and almost immediately Maclver ap- 
pears as one of the Goicouria-Christo expedi- 
tion to Cuba, of which Goicouria was com- 
mander-in-chief, and two famous American 
officers, Brigadier-General Samuel C. Williams 
was a general and Colonel Wright Schumburg 
was chief of staff. 

In the scrap-book I find " General Order 
No. II of the Liberal Army of the Republic 
of Cuba, issued at Cedar Keys, October 3, 
1 869." In it Colonel Maclver is spoken of as 
in charge of officers not attached to any organ- 
ized corps of the division. And again : 

" General Order No. V, Expeditionary Di- 
vision, Republic of Cuba, on board Lilian," an- 
nounces that the place to which the expedition 
is bound has been changed, and that Gen- 
eral Wright Schumburg, who now is in com- 
mand, orders " all officers not otherwise com- 
missioned to join Colonel Maclver's ' Corps of 
Officers.' " 

The Lilian ran out of coal, and to obtain 
19 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

firewood put in at Cedar Keys. For two 
weeks the patriots cut wood and drilled upon 
the beach, when they were captured by a Brit- 
ish gunboat and taken to Nassau. There they 
were set at liberty, but their arms, boat, and 
stores were confiscated. 

In a sailing vessel Maclver finally reached 
Cuba, and under Goicouria, who had made a 
successful landing, saw some " help yourself ,J 
fighting. Goicouria's force was finally scat- 
tered, and Maclver escaped from the Spanish 
soldiery only by putting to sea in an open boat, 
in which he endeavored to make Jamaica. 

On the third day out he was picked up by 
a steamer and again landed at Nassau, from 
which place he returned to New York. 

At that time in this city there was a very 
interesting man named Thaddeus P. Mott, 
who had been an officer in our army and later 
had entered the service of Ismail Pasha. By 
the Khedive he had been appointed a general 
of division and had received permission to 
reorganize the Egyptian army. 

His object in coming to New York was to 

engage officers for that service. He came at 

an opportune moment. At that time the city 

20 



MAJOR-GENERAL MACIVER 

was filled with men who, in the Rebellion, on 
one side or the other, had held command, 
and many of these, unfitted by four years 
of soldiering for any other calling, readily 
accepted the commissions which Mott had au- 
thority to offer. New York was not large 
enough to keep Maclver and Mott long apart, 
and they soon came to an understanding. 
The agreement drawn up between them is a 
curious document. It is written in a neat hand 
on sheets of foolscap tied together like a Com- 
mencement-day address, with blue ribbon. In 
it Maclver agrees to serve as colonel of cav- 
alry in the service of the Khedive. With a 
few legal phrases omitted, the document reads 
as follows: 

"Agreement entered into this 24th day of March, 
1870, between the Government of his Royal Highness 
the Khedive of Egypt, represented by General Thad- 
deus P. Mott of the first part, and H. R. H. Maclver 
of New York City. 

" The party of the second part, being desirous of 
entering into the service of party of the first part, 
in the military capacity of a colonel of cavalry, prom- 
ises to serve and obey party of the first part faithfully 
and truly in his military capacity during the space of 
five years from this date ; that the party of the second 
part waives all claims of protection usually afforded 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

to Americans by consular and diplomatic agents of 
the United States, and expressly obligates himself to 
be subject to the orders of the party of the first part, 
and to make, wage, and vigorously prosecute war 
against any and all the enemies of party of the first 
part; that the party of the second part will not under 
any event be governed, controlled by, or submit to, 
any order, law, mandate, or proclamation issued by 
the Government of the United States of America, for- 
bidding party of the second part to serve party of the 
first part to make war according to any of the pro- 
visions herein contained, it being, however, distinctly 
understood that nothing herein contained shall be 
construed as obligating party of the second part to 
bear arms or wage war against the United States of 
America. 

" Party of the first part promises to furnish party 
of the second part with horses, rations, and pay him 
for his services the same salary now paid to colonels 
of cavalry in United States army, and will furnish 
him quarters suitable to his rank in army. Also 
promises, in the case of illness caused by climate, 
that said party may resign his office and shall receive 
his expenses to America and two months' pay; that 
he receives one-fifth of his regular pay during his 
active service, together with all expenses of every 
nature attending such enterprise." 

It also stipulates as to what sums shall 
be paid his family or children in case of his 
death. 

To this Maclver signs this oath : 

29 



MAJOR-GENERAL MACIVER 

" In the presence of the ever-living God, I swear 
that I will in all things honestly, faithfully, and truly 
keep, observe, and perform the obligations and prom- 
ises above enumerated, and endeavor to conform to 
the wishes and desires of the Government of his Royal 
Highness the Khedive of Egypt, in all things con- 
nected with the furtherance of his prosperity, and the 
maintenance of his throne." 

On arriving at Cairo, Maclver was ap- 
pointed inspector-general of cavalry, and fur- 
nished with a uniform, of which this is a de- 
scription : " It consisted of a blue tunic with 
gold spangles, embroidered in gold up the 
sleeves and front, neat-fitting red trousers, 
and high patent-leather boots, while the inevi- 
table fez completed the gay costume." 

The climate of Cairo did not agree with 
Maclver, and, in spite of his " gay costume," 
after six months he left the Egyptian service. 
His honorable discharge was signed by Stone 
Bey, who, in the favor of the Khedive, had 
supplanted General Mott. 

It is a curious fact that, in spite of his ill 
health, immediately after leaving Cairo, Mac- 
lver was sufficiently recovered to at once 
plunge into the Franco-Prussian War. At the 
battle of Orleans, while on the staff of Gen- 

23 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

eral Chanzy, he was wounded. In this war 
his rank was that of a colonel of cavalry of 
the auxiliary army. 

His next venture was in the Carlist upris- 
ing of 1873, when he formed a Carlist League, 
and on several occasions acted as bearer of 
important messages from the " King," as Don 
Carlos was called, to the sympathizers with 
his cause in France and England. 

Maclver was promised, if he carried out 
successfully a certain mission upon which he 
was sent, and if Don Carlos became king, that 
he would be made a marquis. As Don Carlos 
is still a pretender, Maclver is still a general. 

Although in disposing of his sword Mac- 
lver never allowed his personal predilections 
to weigh with him, he always treated himself 
to a hearty dislike of the Turks, and we next 
find him fighting against them in Herzego- 
vina with the Montenegrins. And when the 
Servians declared war against the same peo- 
ple, Maclver returned to London to organize 
a cavalry brigade to fight with the Servian 
army. 

Of this brigade and of the rapid rise of 
Maclver to highest rank and honors in Servia, 

24 



MAJOR-GENERAL MACIVER 

the scrap-book is most eloquent. The cavalry 
brigade was to be called the Knights of the 
Red Cross. 

In a letter to the editor of the Hour, the 
general himself speaks of it in the following 
terms : 

" It may be interesting to many of your readers to 
learn that a select corps of gentlemen is at present in 
course of organization under the above title with the 
mission of proceeding to the Levant to take measures 
in case of emergency for the defense of the Christian 
population, and more especially of British subjects 
who are to a great extent unprovided with adequate 
means of protection from the religious furies of the 
Mussulmans. The lives of Christian women and chil- 
dren are in hourly peril from fanatical hordes. The 
Knights will be carefully chosen and kept within strict 
military control, and will be under command of a 
practical soldier with large experience of the Eastern 
countries. Templars and all other Crusaders are in- 
vited to give aid and sympathy." 

Apparently Maclver was not successful in 
enlisting many Knights, for a war corre- 
spondent at the capital of Servia, waiting for 
the war to begin, writes as follows : 

" A Scotch soldier of fortune, Henry Maclver, a 
colonel by rank, has arrived at Belgrade with a small 
contingent of military adventurers. Five weeks ago 

25 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

I met him in Fleet Street, London, and had some talk 
about his ' expedition.' He had received a commission 
from the Prince of Servia to organize and command 
an independent cavalry brigade, and he then was bus- 
ily enrolling his volunteers into a body styled ' The 
Knights of the Red Cross/ I am afraid some of his 
bold Crusaders have earned more distinction for their 
attacks on Fleet Street bars than they are likely to 
earn on Servian battlefields, but then I must not an- 
ticipate history." 

Another paper tells that at the end of the 
first week of his service as a Servian officer, 
Maclver had enlisted ninety men, but that 
they were scattered about the town, many 
without shelter and rations: 

" He assembled his men on the Rialto, and in spite 
of official expostulation, the men were marched up to 
the Minister's four abreast — and they marched fairly 
well, making a good show. The War Minister was 
taken by storm, and at once granted everything. It 
has raised the English colonel's popularity with his 
men to fever heat." 

This from the Times, London: 

" Our Belgrade correspondent telegraphs last night : 
" ' There is here at present a gentleman named Mac- 
lver. He came from England to offer himself and 
his sword to the Servians. The Servian Minister of 
War gave him a colonel's commission. This morning 

26 



MAJOR-GENERAL MACIVER 

I saw him drilling about one hundred and fifty re- 
markably fine-looking fellows, all clad in a good serv- 
iceable cavalry uniform, and he has horses/ " 

Later we find that : 

" Colonel Maclver's Legion of Cavalry, organizing 
here, now numbers over two hundred men." 

And again : 

" Prince Nica, a Roumanian cousin of the Princess 
Natalie of Servia, has joined Colonel Maclver's cav- 
alry corps." 

Later, in the Court Journal, October 28, 
1876, we read: 

" Colonel Maclver, who a few years ago was very 
well known in military circles in Dublin, now is mak- 
ing his mark with the Servian Army. In the war 
against the Turks, he commands about one thousand 
Russo-Servian cavalry." 

He was next to receive the following 
honors : 

" Colonel Maclver has been appointed commander 
of the cavalry of the Servian Armies on the Morava 
and Timok, and has received the Cross of the Takovo 
Order from General Tchernaiefr" for gallant conduct 
in the field, and the gold medal for valor." 

Later we learn from the Daily News: 
27 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

" Mr. Lewis Farley, Secretary of the * League in 
Aid of Christians of Turkey/ has received the follow- 
ing letter, dated Belgrade, October 10, 1876 : 

" ' Dear Sir : In reference to the embroidered ban- 
ner so kindly worked by an English lady and for- 
warded by the League to Colonel Maclver, I have 
great pleasure in conveying to you the following par- 
ticulars. On Sunday morning, the Flag having been 
previously consecrated by the Archbishop, was con- 
ducted by a guard of honor to the palace, and Colonel 
Maclver, in the presence of Prince Milan and a nu- 
merous suite, in the name and on behalf of yourself 
and the fair donor, delivered it into the hands of the 
Princess Natalie. The gallant Colonel wore upon this 
occasion his full uniform as brigade commander and 
Chief of Cavalry of the Servian Army, and bore upon 
his breast the ' Gold Cross of Takovo ' which he re- 
ceived after the battles of the 28th and 30th of Sep- 
tember, in recognition of the heroism and bravery 
he displayed upon these eventful days. The beauty 
of the decoration was enhanced by the circumstances 
of its bestowal, for on the evening of the battle of the 
30th, General Tchernaieff approached Colonel Mac- 
lver, and, unclasping the Cross from his own breast, 
placed it upon that of the Colonel. 

"' (Signed) Hugh Jackson. 

"'Member of Council of the League." 

In Servia and in the Servian Army Maclver 

reached what as yet is the highest point of 

his career, and of his life the happiest period. 

He was general de brigade, which is not 
28 




Maclver as General of Brigade, in Servian 
Uniform. 



MAJOR-GENERAL MACIVER 

what we know as a brigade general, but is 
one who commands a division, a major-gen- 
eral. He was a great favorite both at the 
Palace and with the people, the pay was good, 
fighting plentiful, and Belgrade gay and amus- 
ing. Of all the places he has visited and the 
countries he has served, it is of this Balkan 
kingdom that the general seems to speak most 
fondly and with the greatest feeling. Of 
Queen Natalie he was and is a most loyal and 
chivalric admirer, and was ever ready, when 
he found any one who did not as greatly re- 
spect the lady, to offer him the choice of 
swords or pistols. Even for Milan he finds an 
extenuating word. 

After Servia the general raised more For- 
eign Legions, planned further expeditions; in 
Central America reorganized the small armies 
of the small republics, served as United States 
Consul, and offered his sword to President 
McKinley for use against Spain. But with 
Servia the most active portion of the life of 
the general ceased, and the rest has been a 
repetition of what went before. At present 
his time is divided between New York and Vir- 
ginia, where he has been offered an executive 

29 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

position in the approaching Jamestown Expo- 
sition. Both North and South he has many 
friends, many admirers. But his life is, and, 
from the nature of his profession, must always 
be, a lonely one. 

While other men remain planted in one 
spot, gathering about them a home, sons and 
daughters, an income for old age, Maclver is 
a rolling stone, a piece of floating seaweed; 
as the present King of England called him 
fondly, " that vagabond soldier." 

To a man who has lived in the saddle and 
upon transports, " neighbor " conveys noth- 
ing, and even " comrade " too often means 
one who is no longer living. 

With the exception of the United States, 
of which he now is a naturalized citizen, the 
general has fought for nearly every country 
in the world, but if any of those for which he 
lost his health and blood, and for which he 
risked his life, remembers him, it makes no sign. 
And the general is too proud to ask to be re- 
membered. To-day there is no more interest- 
ing figure than this man who in years is still 
young enough to lead an army corps, and who, 
for forty years, has been selling his sword and 

30 




Major-General Henry Ronald Douglas Maclver as He 
Is To-day. 



MAJOR-GENERAL MACIVER 

risking his life for presidents, pretenders, 
charlatans, and emperors. 

He finds some mighty changes : Cuba, which 
he fought to free, is free; men of the South, 
with whom for four years he fought shoulder 
to shoulder, are now wearing the blue; the 
Empire of Mexico, for which he fought, is a 
republic; the Empire of France, for which he 
fought, is a republic; the Empire of Brazil, 
for which he fought, is a republic ; the dynasty 
in Servia to which he owes his greatest honors 
has been wiped out by murder. From none 
of these eighteen countries he has served has 
he a pension, berth, or billet, and at sixty he 
finds himself at home in every land, but with 
a home in none. 

Still he has his sword, his blanket, and in 
the event of war, to obtain a commission he 
has only to open his tin boxes and show the 
commissions already won. Indeed, any day, 
in a new uniform, and under the Nineteenth 
Flag, the general may again be winning fresh 
victories and honors. 

And so, this brief sketch of him is left unfin- 
ished. We will mark it — To be continued. 



31 



II 

BARON JAMES HARDEN-HICKEY 

THIS is an attempt to tell the story of 
Baron Harden-Hickey, the Man Who 
Made Himself King, the man who was born 
after his time. 

If the reader, knowing something of the 
strange career of Harden-Hickey, wonders 
why one writes of him appreciatively rather 
than in amusement, he is asked not to judge 
Harden-Hickey as one judges a contempo- 
rary. 

Harden-Hickey, in our day, was as incon- 
gruous a figure as was the American at the 
Court of King Arthur; he was as unhappily 
out of the picture as would be Cyrano de Ber- 
gerac on the floor of the Board of Trade. 
Judged, as at the time he was judged, by writ- 
ers of comic paragraphs, by presidents of 
railroads, by amateur " statesmen " at Wash- 
ington, Harden-Hickey was a joke. To the 

32 



BARON HARDEN-HICKEY 

vacant mind of the village idiot, Rip Van 
Winkle returning to Falling Water also was 
a joke. The people of our day had not the 
time to understand Harden-Hickey ; they 
thought him a charlatan, half a dangerous 
adventurer and half a fool; and Harden- 
Hickey certainly did not understand them. 
His last words, addressed to his wife, showed 
this. They were : " I would rather die a gen- 
tleman than live a blackguard like your 
father." 

As a matter of fact, his father-in-law, al- 
though living under the disadvantage of being 
a Standard Oil magnate, neither was, nor is, 
a blackguard, and his son-in-law had been 
treated by him generously and with patience. 
But for the duellist and soldier of fortune it 
was impossible to sympathize with a man who 
took no greater risk in life than to ride on 
one of his own railroads, and of the views the 
two men held of each other, that of John H» 
Flagler was probably the fairer and the more 
kindly. 

Harden-Hickey was one of the most pictur- 
esque, gallant, and pathetic adventurers of our 
day; but Flagler also deserves our sympathy. 

33 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

For an unimaginative and hard-working 
Standard Oil King to have a D'Artagnan 
thrust upon him as a son-in-law must be 
trying. 

James A. Harden-Hickey, James the First 
of Trinidad, Baron of the Holy Roman Em- 
pire, was born on December 8, 1854. As to 
the date all historians agree; as to where the 
important event took place they differ. That 
he was born in France his friends are positive, 
but at the time of his death in El Paso the San 
Francisco papers claimed him as a native of 
California. All agree that his ancestors were 
Catholics and Royalists who left Ireland with 
the Stuarts when they sought refuge in 
France. The version which seems to be the 
most probable is that he was born in San 
Francisco, where as one of the early settlers, 
his father, E. C. Hickey, was well known, and 
that early in his life, in order to educate him, 
the mother took him to Europe. 

There he was educated at the Jesuit Col- 
lege at Namur, then at Leipsic, and later 
entered the Military College of St. Cyr. 

James the First was one of those boys who 
never had the misfortune to grow up. To the 

34 



BARON HARDEN-HICKEY 

moment of his death, in all he planned you 
can trace the effects of his early teachings and 
environment; the influences of the great 
Church that nursed him, and of the city of 
Paris, in which he lived. Under the Second 
Empire, Paris was at her maddest, baddest, 
and best. To-day under the Republic, with- 
out a court, with a society kept in funds by 
the self-expatriated wives and daughters of 
our business men, she lacks the reasons for 
which Baron Haussmann bedecked her and 
made her beautiful. The good Loubet, the 
worthy Fallieres, except that they furnish the 
cartoonist with subjects for ridicule, do not 
add to the gayety of Paris. But when Har- 
den-Hickey was a boy, Paris was never so 
carelessly gay, so brilliant, never so over- 
charged with life, color, and adventure. 

In those days " the Emperor sat in his box 
that night/' and in the box opposite sat Cora 
Pearl; veterans of the campaign of Italy, of 
Mexico, from the desert fights of Algiers, 
sipped sugar and water in front of Tortoni's, 
the Cafe Durand, the Cafe Riche; the side- 
walks rang with their sabres, the boulevards 
were filled with the colors of the gorgeous 

35 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

uniforms; all night of each night the Place 
Vendome shone with the carriage lamps of 
the visiting Pashas from Egypt, of nabobs 
from India, of rastaquoueres from the sister 
Empire of Brazil ; the state carriages, with the 
outriders and postilions in the green and gold 
of the Empress, swept through the Champs 
Elysees, and at the Bal Bulier, and at Mabile 
the students and " grisettes " introduced the 
cancan. The men of those days were Hugo, 
Thiers, Dumas, Daudet, Alfred de Musset; 
the magnificent blackguard, the Due de 
Morny, and the great, simple Canrobert, the 
captain of barricades, who became a Marshal 
of France. 

Over all was the mushroom Emperor, his 
ante-rooms crowded with the titled charlatans 
of Europe, his court radiant with countesses 
created overnight. And it was the Emperor, 
with his love of theatrical display, of gorgeous 
ceremonies; with his restless reaching after 
military glory, the weary, cynical adventurer, 
that the boy at St. Cyr took as his model. 

Royalist as was Harden-Hickey by birth 
and tradition, and Royalist as he always re- 
mained, it was the court at the Tuileries that 

36 



BARON HARDEN-HICKEY 

filled his imagination. The Bourbons, whom 
he served, hoped some day for a court; at the 
Tuileries there was a court, glittering before 
his physical eyes. The Bourbons were pleas- 
ant old gentlemen, who later willingly sup- 
ported him, and for whom always he was 
equally willing to fight, either with his sword 
or his pen. But to the last, in his mind, he 
carried pictures of the Second Empire, as he, 
as a boy, had known it. 

Can you not imagine the future James the 
First, barelegged, in a black-belted smock, 
halting with his nurse, or his priest, to gaze 
up in awe-struck delight at the great, red- 
breeched Zouaves lounging on guard at the 
Tuileries ? 

'' When I grow up," said little James to 
himself, not knowing that he never would 
grow up, " I shall have Zouaves for my palace 
guard." 

And twenty years later, when he laid down 
the laws for his little kingdom, you find that 
the officers of his court must wear the mus- 
tache, " a la Louis Napoleon," and that the 
Zouave uniform will be worn by the Palace 
Guards. 

37 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

In 1883, while he still was at the War Col- 
lege, his father died, and when he graduated, 
which he did with honors, he found himself 
his own master. His assets were a small in- 
come, a perfect knowledge of the French lan- 
guage, and the reputation of being one of the 
most expert swordsmen in Paris. He chose 
not to enter the army, and instead became a 
journalist, novelist, duellist, an habitue of the 
Latin Quarter and the Boulevards. 

As a novelist the titles of his books sug- 
gest their quality. Among them are: " Un 
Amour Vendeen," " Lettres d'un Yankee," 
" Un Amour dans le Monde/' " Memoires 
d'un Gommeux," " Merveilleuses Aventures 
de Nabuchodonosor, Nosebreaker." 

Of the Catholic Church he wrote seriously, 
apparently with deep conviction, with high 
enthusiasm. In her service as a defender of 
the faith he issued essays, pamphlets, " broad- 
sides." The opponents of the Church in Paris 
he attacked relentlessly. 

As a reward for his championship he re- 
ceived the title of Baron. 

In 1878, while only twenty-four, he married 
the Countess de Saint-Pery, by whom he had 

38 



BARON HARDEN-HICKEY 

two children, a boy and a girl, and three years 
later he started Triboulet, It was this paper 
that made him famous to " all Paris." 

It was a Royalist sheet, subsidized by the 
Count de Chambord and published in the in- 
terest of the Bourbons. Until 1888 Harden- 
Hickey was its editor, and even by his enemies 
it must be said that he served his employers 
with zeal. During the seven years in which 
the paper amused Paris and annoyed the Re- 
publican Government, as its editor Harden- 
Hickey was involved in forty-two lawsuits, for 
different editorial indiscretions, fined three 
hundred thousand francs, and was a principal 
in countless duels. 

To his brother editors his standing interro- 
gation was : " Would you prefer to meet me 
upon the editorial page, or in the Bois de Bou- 
logne ? " Among those who met him in the 
Bois were Aurelien Scholl, H. Lavenbryon, 
M. Taine, M. de Cyon, Philippe Du Bois, Jean 
Moreas. 

In 1888, either because, his patron the Count 
de Chambord having died, there was no more 
money to pay the fines, or because the patience 
of the Government was exhausted, Triboulet 

39 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

ceased to exist, and Harden-Hickey, claiming 
the paper had been suppressed and he himself 
exiled, crossed to London. 

From there he embarked upon a voyage 
around the world, which lasted two years, and 
in the course of which he discovered the island 
kingdom of which he was to be the first and 
last king. Previous to his departure, having 
been divorced from the Countess de Saint- 
Pery, he placed his boy and girl in the care 
of a fellow journalist and very dear friend, 
the Count de la Boissiere, of whom later we 
shall hear more. 

Harden-Hickey started around the world on 
the Astoria, a British merchant vessel bound 
for India by way of Cape Horn, Captain Jack- 
son commanding. 

When off the coast of Brazil the ship 

touched at the uninhabited island of Trinidad. 

Historians of James the First say that it was 

through stress of weather that the Astoria was 

driven to seek refuge there, but as, for six 

months of the year, to make a landing on the 

island is almost impossible, and as at any time, 

under stress of weather, Trinidad would be a 

place to avoid, it is more likely Jackson put 

4 o 



BARON HARDEN-HICKEY 

in to replenish his water-casks, or to obtain a 
supply of turtle meat. 

Or it may have been that, having told Har- 
den-Hickey of the derelict island, the latter 
persuaded the captain to allow him to land 
and explore it. Of this, at least, we are cer- 
tain, a boat was sent ashore, Harden-Hickey 
went ashore in it, and before he left the island, 
as a piece of no man's land, belonging to no 
country, he claimed it in his own name, and 
upon the beach raised a flag of his own 
design. 

The Island of Trinidad claimed by Harden- 
Hickey must not be confused with the larger 
Trinidad belonging to Great Britain and lying 
off Venezuela. 

The English Trinidad is a smiling, peaceful 
spot of great tropical beauty; it is one of the 
fairest places in the West Indies. At every 
hour of the year the harbor of Port of Spain 
holds open its arms to vessels of every draft. 
A Governor in a pith helmet, a cricket club, a 
bishop in gaiters, and a botanical garden, go 
to make it a prosperous and contented colony. 
But the little derelict Trinidad, in latitude 
20° 30' south, and longitude 29 22' west, 

41 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

seven hundred miles from the coast of Brazil, 
is but a spot upon the ocean. On most maps 
it is not even a spot. Except by birds, turtles, 
and hideous land-crabs, it is uninhabited; and 
against the advances of man its shores are 
fortified with cruel ridges of coral, jagged 
limestone rocks, and a tremendous towering 
surf which, even in a dead calm, beats many 
feet high against the coast. 

In 1698 Dr. Halley visited the island, and 
says he found nothing living but doves and 
land-crabs. " Saw many green turtles in sea, 
but by reason of the great surf, could catch 
none." 

After Halley's visit, in 1700 the island was 
settled by a few Portuguese from Brazil. The 
ruins of their stone huts are still in evidence. 
But Amaro Delano, who called in 1803, makes 
no mention of the Portuguese; and when, in 
1822, Commodore Owen visited Trinidad, he 
found nothing living there save cormorants, 
petrels, gannets, man-of-war birds, and " tur- 
tles weighing from five hundred to seven 
hundred pounds." 

In 1889 E. F. Knight, who in the Japanese- 
Russian War represented the London Mom- 

4- 1 



F 



IP 

I! 




BARON HARDEN-HICKEY 

ing Post, visited Trinidad in his yacht in 
search of buried treasure. 

Alexander Dalrymple, in his book entitled 
" Collection of Voages, chiefly in the Southern 
Atlantick Ocean, 1775," tells how, in 1700, 
he " took possession of the island in his Maj- 
esty's name as knowing it to be granted by 
the King's letter patent, leaving a Union Jack 
flying." 

So it appears that before Harden-Hickey 
seized the island it already had been claimed 
by Great Britain, and later, on account of the 
Portuguese settlement/by Brazil. The answer 
Harden-Hickey made to these claims was that 
the English never settled in Trinidad, and that 
the Portuguese abandoned it, and, therefore, 
their claims lapsed. In his " prospectus " of 
his island, Harden-Hickey himself describes 
it thus : 

' Trinidad is about five miles long and three 
miles wide. In spite of its rugged and unin- 
viting appearance, the inland plateaus are rich 
with luxuriant vegetation. 

" Prominent among this is a peculiar species 
of bean, which is not only edible but extremely 
palatable. The surrounding seas swarm with 

43 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

fish, which as yet are wholly unsuspicious of 
the hook. Dolphins, rock cod, pigfish, and 
blackfish may be caught as quickly as they can 
be hauled out. I look to the sea birds and the 
turtles to afford our principal source of rev- 
enue. Trinidad is the breeding place of 
almost the entire feathery population of the 
South Atlantic Ocean. The exportation of 
guano alone should make my little country 
prosperous. Turtles visit the island to deposit 
eggs, and at certain seasons the beach is lit- 
erally alive with them. The only drawback 
to my projected kingdom is the fact that it 
has no good harbor and can be approached 
only when the sea is calm." 

As a matter of fact sometimes months pass 
before it is possible to effect a landing. 

Another asset of the island held out by the 
prospectus was its great store of buried treas- 
ure. Before Harden-Hickey seized the island, 
this treasure had made it known. This is the 
legend. In 182 1 a great store of gold and sil- 
ver plate plundered from Peruvian churches 
had been concealed on the island by pirates 
near Sugar Loaf Hill, on the shore of what 
is known as the Southwest Bay. Much of this 

44 




txJO 
O 

Oh 

o 



BARON HARDEN-HICKEY 

plate came from the cathedral at Lima, having 
been carried from there during the War of In- 
dependence when the Spanish residents fled the 
country. In their eagerness to escape they 
put to sea in any ship that offered, and these 
unarmed and unseaworthy vessels fell an easy 
prey to pirates. One of these pirates on his 
deathbed, in gratitude to his former captain, 
told him the secret of the treasure. In 1892 
this captain was still living, in Newcastle, 
England, and although his story bears a fam- 
ily resemblance to every other story of buried 
treasure, there were added to the tale of the 
pirate some corroborative details. These, in 
twelve years, induced five different expeditions 
to visit the island. The two most important 
were that of E. F. Knight and one from the 
Tyne in the bark Aurea. 

In his " Cruise of the Alert e" Knight gives 
a full description of the island, and of his 
attempt to find the treasure. In this, a land- 
slide having covered the place where it was 
buried, he was unsuccessful. 

But Knight's book is the only source of 
accurate information concerning Trinidad, 
and in writing his prospectus it is evident that 

45 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

Harden-Hickey was forced to borrow from it 
freely. Knight himself says that the most 
minute and accurate description of Trinidad 
is to be found in the " Frank Mildmay " of 
Captain Marryat. He found it so easy to 
identify each spot mentioned in the novel that 
he believes the author of " Midshipman Easy " 
himself touched there. 

After seizing Trinidad, Harden-Hickey 
rounded the Cape and made north to Japan, 
China, and India. In India he became inter- 
ested in Buddhism, and remained for over a 
year questioning the priests of that religion 
and studying its tenets and history. 

On his return to Paris, in 1890, he met 
Miss Annie Harper Flagler, daughter of John 
H. Flagler. A year later, on St. Patrick's 
Day, 1 89 1, at the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian 
Church, Miss Flagler became the Baroness 
Harden-Hickey. The Rev. John Hall mar- 
ried them. 

For the next two years Harden-Hickey 

lived in New York, but so quietly that, except 

that he lived quietly, it is difficult to find out 

anything concerning him. The man who a 

few years before had delighted Paris with his 

46 



BARON HARDEN-HICKEY 

daily feuilletons, with his duels, with his forty- 
two lawsuits, who had been the master of 
revels in the Latin Quarter, in New York lived 
almost as a recluse, writing a book on Buddh- 
ism. While he was in New York I was a 
reporter on the Evening Sun, but I cannot 
recall ever having read his name in the news- 
papers of that day, and I heard of him only 
twice; once as giving an exhibition of his 
water-colors at the American Art Galleries, 
and again as the author of a book I found 
in a store in Twenty-second Street, just east 
of Broadway, then the home of the Truth 
Seeker Publishing Company. 

It was a grewsome compilation and had just 
appeared in print. It was called " Euthanasia, 
or the Ethics of Suicide." This book was an 
apology or plea for self-destruction. In it the 
Baron laid down those occasions when he con- 
sidered suicide pardonable, and when obliga- 
tory. To support his arguments and to show 
that suicide was a noble act, he quoted Plato, 
Cicero, Shakespeare, and even misquoted the 
Bible. He gave a list of poisons, and the 
amount of each necessary to kill a human 
being. To show how one can depart from 

47 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

life with the least pain, he illustrated the text 
with most unpleasant pictures, drawn by him- 
self. 

The book showed how far Harden-Hickey 
had strayed from the teachings of the Jesuit 
College at Namur, and of the Church that had 
made him " noble." 

All of these two years had not been spent 
only in New York. Harden-Hickey made 
excursions to California, to Mexico, and to 
Texas, and in each of these places bought 
cattle ranches and mines. The money to pay 
for these investments came from his father-in- 
law. But not directly. Whenever he wanted 
money he asked his wife, or De la Boissiere, 
who was a friend also of Flagler, to obtain it 
for him. 

His attitude toward his father-in-law is dif- 
ficult to explain. It is not apparent that Flag- 
ler ever did anything which could justly offend 
him; indeed, he always seems to have spoken 
of his son-in-law with tolerance, and often 
with awe, as one would speak of a clever, 
wayward child. But Harden-Hickey chose to 
regard Flagler as his enemy, as a sordid man 

of business who could not understand the feel- 

4 8 



BARON HARDEN-HICKEY 

ings and aspirations of a genius and a gen- 
tleman. 

Before Harden-Hickey married, the misun- 
derstanding between his wife's father and 
himself began. Because he thought Harden- 
Hickey was marrying his daughter for her 
money, Flagler opposed the union. Conse- 
quently, Harden-Hickey married Miss Flagler 
without " settlements/' and for the first few 
years supported her without aid from her 
father. But his wife had been accustomed to 
a manner of living beyond the means of the 
soldier of fortune, and soon his income, and 
then even his capital, was exhausted. From 
her mother the Baroness inherited a fortune. 
This was in the hands of her father as execu- 
tor. When his own money was gone, Harden- 
Hickey endeavored to have the money belong- 
ing to his wife placed to her credit, or to his. 
To this, it is said, Flagler, on the ground that 
Harden-Hickey was not a man of business, 
while he was, objected, and urged that he 
was, and that if it remained in his hands the 
money would be better invested and better 
expended. It was the refusal of Flagler to 
intrust Harden-Hickey with the care of his 

49 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

wife's money that caused the breach between 
them. 

As I have said, you cannot judge Harden- 
Hickey as you would a contemporary. With 
the people among whom he was thrown, his 
ideas were entirely out of joint. He should 
have lived in the days of " The Three Mus- 
keteers." People who looked upon him as 
working for his own hand entirely misunder- 
stood him. He was absolutely honest, and as 
absolutely without a sense of humor. To him, 
to pay taxes, to pay grocers' bills, to depend 
for protection upon a policeman, was intoler- 
able. He lived in a world of his own imagin- 
ing. And one day, in order to make his 
imaginings real, and to escape from his father- 
in-law's unromantic world of Standard Oil and 
Florida hotels, in a proclamation to the Pow- 
ers he announced himself as King James the 
First of the Principality of Trinidad. 

The proclamation failed to create a world 
crisis. Several of the Powers recognized his 
principality and his title ; but, as a rule, people 
laughed, wondered, and forgot. That the 
daughter of John Flagler was to rule the new 
principality gave it a " news interest," and for 

50 



BARON HARDEN-HICKEY 

a few Sundays in the supplements she was 
hailed as the " American Queen." 

When upon the subject of the new kingdom 
Flagler himself was interviewed, he showed 
an open mind. 

" My son-in-law is a very determined man," 
he said; "he will carry out any scheme in 
which he is interested. Had he consulted me 
about this, I would have been glad to have 
aided him with money or advice. My son-in- 
law is an extremely well-read, refined, well- 
bred man. He does not court publicity. 
While he was staying in my house he spent 
nearly all the time in the library translating 
an Indian book on Buddhism. My daughter 
has no ambition to be a queen or anything else 
than what she is — an American girl. But my 
son-in-law means to carry on this Trinidad 
scheme, and — he will." 

From his father-in-law, at least, Harden- 
Hickey could not complain that he had met 
with lack of sympathy. 

The rest of America was amused ; and after 
less than nine days, indifferent. But Harden- 
Hickey, though unobtrusively, none the less 
earnestly continued to play the part of king. 

51 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

His friend De la Boissiere he appointed his 
Minister of Foreign Affairs, and established 
in a Chancellery at 217 West Thirty-sixth 
Street, New York, and from there was issued 
a sort of circular, or prospectus, written by the 
King and signed by " Le Grand Chancelier, 
Secretaire d'Etat pour les Affaires Etrangeres, 
M. le Comte de la Boissiere." 

The document, written in French, an- 
nounced that the new state would be gov- 
erned by a military dictatorship, that the royal 
standard was a yellow triangle on a red 
ground, and that the arms of the principality 
were " d'Or chape de Gueules." It pointed 
out naively that those who first settled on the 
island would be naturally the oldest inhab- 
itants, and hence would form the aristocracy. 
But only those who at home enjoyed social 
position and some private fortune would be 
admitted into this select circle. 

For itself the state reserved a monopoly of 
the guano, of the turtles, and of the buried 
treasure. And both to discover the treasure 
and to encourage settlers to dig and so culti- 
vate the soil, a percentage of the treasure was 
promised to the one who found it. 

52 



BARON HARDEN-HICKEY 

Any one purchasing ten $200 bonds was 
entitled to a free passage to the island, and 
after a year, should he so desire it, a return 
trip. The hard work was to be performed by 
Chinese coolies, the aristocracy existing beau- 
tifully, and, according to the prospectus, to 
enjoy " vie d'un genre tout nouveau, et la 
recherche de sensations nouvelles." 

To reward his subjects for prominence in 
literature, the arts, and the sciences, his Ma- 
jesty established an order of chivalry. The 
official document creating this order reads : 

" We, James, Prince of Trinidad, have resolved to 
commemorate our accession to the throne of Trinidad 
by the institution of an Order of Chivalry, destined to 
reward literature, industry, science, and the human 
virtues, and by these presents have established and 
do institute, with cross and crown, the Order of the 
Insignia of the Cross of Trinidad, of which we and 
our heirs and successors shall be the sovereigns. 

" Given in our Chancellery the Eighth of the month 
of December, one thousand eight hundred and ninety- 
three, and of our reign, the First Year. 

" James." 

There were four grades: Chevalier, Com- 
mander, Grand Officer, and Grand Cross ; and 

53 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

the name of each member of the order was 
inscribed in " The Book of Gold." A pension 
of one thousand francs was given to a Cheva- 
lier, of two thousand francs to a Commander, 
and of three thousand francs to a Grand Offi- 
cer. Those of the grade of Grand Cross were 
content with a plaque of eight diamond-studded 
rays, with, in the centre, set in red enamel, 
the arms of Trinidad. The ribbon was red and 
yellow. 

A rule of the order read : " The costume 
shall be identical with that of the Chamber- 
lains of the Court of Trinidad, save the but- 
tons, which shall bear the impress of the 
Crown of the Order." 

For himself, King James commissioned a 
firm of jewelers to construct a royal crown. 
In design it was similar to the one which sur- 
mounted the Cross of Trinidad. It is shown 
in the photograph of the insignia. Also, the 
King issued a set of postage stamps on 
which was a picture of the island. They 
were of various colors and denominations, 
and among stamp collectors enjoyed a cer- 
tain sale. 

To-day, as I found when T tried to procure 

54 




The Order of the Cross of Trinidad. 



BARON HARDEN-HICKEY 

one to use in this book, they are worth many 
times their face value. 

For some time the affairs of the new king- 
dom progressed favorably. In San Francisco, 
King James, in person, engaged four hundred 
coolies and fitted out a schooner which he sent 
to Trinidad, where it made regular trips be- 
tween his principality and Brazil; an agent 
was established on the island and the con- 
struction of docks, wharves, and houses was 
begun, while at the chancellery in West Thir- 
ty-sixth Street, the Minister of Foreign Affairs 
was ready to furnish would-be settlers with 
information. 

And then, out of a smiling sky, a sudden 
and unexpected blow was struck at the inde- 
pendence of the little kingdom. It was a blow 
from which it never recovered. 

In July of 1895, while constructing a cable 
to Brazil, Great Britain found the Island of 
Trinidad lying in the direct line she wished to 
follow, and, as a cable station, seized it. Ob- 
jection to this was made by Brazil, and at 
Bahia a mob with stones pelted the sign of the 
English Consul-General. 

By right of Halley's discovery, England 
55 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

claimed the island; as a derelict from the main 
land, Brazil also claimed it. Between the 
rivals, the world saw a chance for war, and 
the fact that the island really belonged to our 
King James for a moment was forgotten. 

But the Minister of Foreign Affairs was at 
his post. With promptitude and vigor he 
acted. He addressed a circular note to all the 
Powers of Europe, and to our State Depart- 
ment a protest. It read as follows: 

" Grande Chancellerie de la Principaute de Trinidad, 

217 West Thirty-sixth Street, 

New York City, U. S. A., 

New York, July 30, 1895. 

" To His Excellency Mr. the Secretary of State of the 
Republic of the United States of North America, 
Washington, D. C: 

" Excellency — I have the honor to recall to your 
memory : 

" 1. That in the course of the month of September, 
1893, Baron Harden-Hickey officially notified all the 
Powers of his taking possession of the uninhabited 
island of Trinidad ; and, 

" 2. That in the course of January, 1894, he re- 
newed to all these Powers the official notification of 
the said taking of possession, and informed them at 
the same time that from that date the land would be 
known as ' Principality of Trinidad ' ; that he took the 
title of ' Prince of Trinidad/ and would reign under 
the name of James I. 

56 



BARON HARDEN-HICKEY 

" In consequence of these official notifications sev- 
eral Powers have recognized the new Principality and 
its Prince, and at all events none thought it neces- 
sary at that epoch to raise objections or formulate 
opposition. 

"The press of the entire world has, on the other 
hand, often acquainted readers with these facts, thus 
giving to them all possible publicity. In consequence 
of the accomplishment of these various formalities, 
and as the law of nations prescribes that ' derelict ' 
territories belong to whoever will take possession of 
them, and as the island of Trinidad, which has been 
abandoned for years, certainly belongs to the afore- 
said category, his Serene Highness Prince James I 
was authorized to regard his rights on the said island 
as perfectly valid and indisputable. 

" Nevertheless, your Excellency knows that re- 
cently, in spite of all the legitimate rights of my august 
sovereign, an English warship has disembarked at 
Trinidad a detachment of armed troops and taken pos- 
session of the island in the name of England. 

" Following this assumption of territory, the Bra- 
zilian Government, invoking a right of ancient Portu- 
guese occupation (long ago outlawed), has notified 
the English Government to surrender the island to 
Brazil. 

" I beg of your Excellency to ask of the Govern- 
ment of the United States of North America to recog- 
nize the Principality of Trinidad as an independent 
State, and to come to an understanding with the other 
American Powers in order to guarantee its neutrality. 

" Thus the Government of the United States of 

57 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

North America will once more accord its powerful as- 
sistance to the cause of right and of justice, misunder- 
stood by England and Brazil, put an end to a situation 
which threatens to disturb the peace, reestablish con- 
cord between two great States ready to appeal to arms, 
and affirm itself, moreover, as the faithful interpreter 
of the Monroe Doctrine. 

" In the expectation of your reply please accept, 
Excellency, the expression of my elevated consid- 
eration. 

" The Grand Chancellor, Secretary for Foreign 
Affairs, 

" COMTE DE LA BOISSIERE." 

At that time Richard Olney was Secretary 
of State, and in his treatment of the protest, 
and of the gentleman who wrote it, he fully 
upheld the reputation he made while in office 
of lack of good manners. Saying he was un- 
able to read the handwriting in which the pro- 
test was written, he disposed of it in a way 
that would suggest itself naturally to a states- 
man and a gentleman. As a " crank " letter 
he turned it over to the Washington corre- 
spondents. You can imagine what they did 
with it. 

The day following the reporters in New 
York swept down upon the Chancellery, and 
upon the Minister of Foreign Affairs. It was 



BARON HARDEN-HICKEY 

the " silly season " in August, there was no 
real news in town, and the troubles of De la 
Boissiere were allowed much space. 

They laughed at him and at his King, at 
his Chancellery, at his broken English, at his 
" grave and courtly manners," even at his 
clothes. But in spite of the ridicule, between 
the lines you could read that to the man him- 
self it all was terribly real. 

I had first heard of the island of Trinidad 
from two men I knew who spent three months 
on it searching for the treasure, and when 
Harden-Hickey proclaimed himself lord of the 
island, through the papers I had carefully fol- 
lowed his fortunes. So, partly out of curios- 
ity, and partly out of sympathy, I called at the 
Chancellery. 

I found it in a brownstone house, in a dirty 
neighborhood, just west of Seventh Avenue 
and of where now stands the York Hotel. 
Three weeks ago I revisited it and found it 
unchanged. At the time of my first visit, on 
the jamb of the front door was pasted a piece 
of paper on which was written in the hand- 
writing of De la Boissiere : " Chancellerie de 
la Principaute de Trinidad/' 

59 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

The Chancellery was not exactly in its 
proper setting. On its doorstep children of 
the tenements were playing dolls with clothes- 
pins ; in the street a huckster in raucous tones 
was offering wilted cabbages to women in 
wrappers leaning from the fire-escapes; the 
smells and the heat of New York in midsum- 
mer rose from the asphalt. It was a far cry 
to the wave-swept island off the coast of 
Brazil. 

De la Boissiere received me with distrust. 
The morning papers had made him man-shy; 
but, after a few " Your Excellencies " and a 
respectful inquiry regarding " His Royal 
Highness/' his confidence revived. In the sit- 
uation he saw nothing humorous, not even in 
an announcement on the wall which read: 
" Sailings to Trinidad." Of these there were 
two; on March ist, and on October ist. On 
the table were many copies of the Royal Proc- 
lamation, the postage stamps of the new gov- 
ernment, the thousand-franc bonds, and, in 
pasteboard boxes, the gold and red enamelled 
crosses of the Order of Trinidad. 

He talked to me frankly and fondly of 

Prince James. Indeed, I never met any man 

60 



BARON HARDEN-HICKEY 

who knew Harden-Hickey well who did not 
speak of him with aggressive loyalty. If at 
his eccentricities they smiled, it was with the 
smile of affection. It was easy to see De la 
Boissiere regarded him not only with the 
affection of a friend, but with the devotion of 
a true subject. In his manner he himself was 
courteous, gentle, and so distinguished that I 
felt as though I were enjoying, on intimate 
terms, an audience with one of the Prime Min- 
isters of Europe. 

And he, on his part, after the ridicule of the 
morning papers, to have any one with outward 
seriousness accept his high office and his King, 
was, I believe, not ungrateful. 

I told him I wished to visit Trinidad, and in 
that I was quite serious. The story of an 
island rilled with buried treasure, and gov- 
erned by a king, whose native subjects were 
turtles and seagulls, promised to make inter- 
esting writing. 

The Count was greatly pleased. I believe 
in me he saw his first bona-fide settler, and 
when I rose to go he even lifted one of the 
Crosses of Trinidad and, before my envious 
eyes, regarded it uncertainly. 

61 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

Perhaps, had he known that of all decora- 
tions it was the one I most desired ; had I only 
then and there booked my passage, or sworn 
allegiance to King James, who knows but that 
to-day I might be a Chevalier, with my name 
in the Book of Gold? But instead of bend- 
ing the knee, I reached for my hat; the 
Count replaced the cross in its pasteboard 
box, and for me the psychological moment 
had passed. 

Others, more deserving of the honor, were 
more fortunate. Among my fellow reporters 
who, like myself, came to scoff, and remained 
to pray, was Henri Pene du Bois, for some 
time until his recent death, the brilliant critic 
of art and music of the American. Then he 
was on the Times, and Henry N. Cary, now 
of the Morning Telegraph, was his managing 
editor. 

When Du Bois reported to Cary on his as- 
signment, he said: " There is nothing funny 
in that story. It's pathetic. Both those men 
are in earnest. They are convinced they are 
being robbed of their rights. Their only fault 
is that they have imagination, and that the 

rest of us lack it. That's the way it struck me, 

62 



BARON HARDEN-HICKEY 

and that's the way the story ought to be 
written." 

" Write it that way," said Cary. 

So, of all the New York papers, the Times, 
for a brief period, became the official organ 
of the Government of James the First, and in 
time Cary and Du Bois were created Cheva- 
liers of the Order of Trinidad, and entitled to 
wear uniforms " similar to those of the Cham- 
berlains of the Court, save that the buttons 
bear the impress of the Royal Crown." 

The attack made by Great Britain and Bra- 
zil upon the independence of the principality, 
while it left Harden-Hickey in the position of 
a king in exile, brought him at once another 
crown, which, by those who offered it to him, 
was described as of incomparably greater 
value than that of Trinidad. 

In the first instance the man had sought the 
throne ; in this case the throne sought the man. 

In 1893 in San Francisco, Ralston J. Mar- 
kowe, a lawyer and a one-time officer of artil- 
lery in the United States Army, gained re- 
nown as one of the Morrow filibustering 
expedition which attempted to overthrow the 
Dole Government in the Hawaiian Isles and 

63 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

restore to the throne Queen Liliuokalani. In 
San Francisco Markowe was nicknamed the 
" Prince of Honolulu," as it was understood, 
should Liliuokalani regain her crown, he 
would be rewarded with some high office. But 
in the star of Liliuokalani, Markowe appar- 
ently lost faith, and thought he saw in Harden- 
Hickey timber more suitable for king-making. 
Accordingly, twenty-four days after the " pro- 
test " was sent to our State Department, Mar- 
kowe switched his allegiance to Harden- 
Hickey, and to him addressed the following 
letter: 

" San Francisco, August 26, 1895. 
" Baron Harden-Hickey, Los Angeles, Cal. : 

" Monseigneur — Your favor of August 16 has been 
received. 

"i. I am the duly authorized agent of the Royalist 
party in so far as it is possible for any one to occupy 
that position under existing circumstances. With the 
Queen in prison and absolutely cut off from all com- 
munication with her friends, it is out of the question 
for me to carry anything like formal credentials. 

" 2. Alienating any part of the territory cannot give 
rise to any constitutional questions, for the reason that 
the constitutions, like the land tenures, are in a state 
of such utter confusion that only a strong hand can 
unravel them, and the restoration will result in the 
establishment of a strong military government. If I 

64 



BARON HARDEN-HICKEY 

go down with the expedition I have organized I shall 
be in full control of the situation and in a position to 
carry out all my contracts. 

" 3. It is the island of Kauai on which I propose to 
establish you as an independent sovereign. 

" 4. My plan is to successively occupy all the islands, 
leaving the capital to the last. When the others have 
fallen, the capital, being cut off from all its resources, 
will be easily taken, and may very likely fall without 
effort. I don't expect in any case to have to fortify 
myself or to take the defensive, or to have to issue a 
call to arms, as I shall have an overwhelming force to 
join me at once, in addition to those who go with me, 
who by themselves will be sufficient to carry every- 
thing before them without active cooperation from 
the people there. 

" 5. The Government forces consist of about 160 
men and boys, with very imperfect military training, 
and of whom about forty are officers. They are or- 
ganized as infantry. There are also about 600 citizens 
enrolled as a reserve guard, who may be called upon 
in case of an emergency, and about 150 police. We 
can fully rely upon the assistance of all the police and 
from one-quarter to one-half of the other troops. And 
of the remainder many will under no circumstances 
engage in a sharp fight in defense of the present Gov- 
ernment. There are now on the island plenty of men 
and arms to accomplish our purpose, and if my expe- 
dition does not get off very soon the people there will 
be organized to do the work without other assistance 
from here than the direction of a few leaders, of which 
they stand more in need than anything else. 

65 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

" 6. The tonnage of the vessel is 146. She at pres- 
ent has berth-room for twenty men, but bunks can be 
arranged in the hold for 256 more, with provision for 
ample ventilation. She has one complete set of sails 
and two extra spars. The remaining information in 
regard to her I will have to obtain and send you to- 
morrow. I think it must be clear to you that the op- 
portunity now offered you will be of incomparably 
greater value at once than Trinidad would ever be. 
Still hoping that I may have an interview with you at 
an early date, respectfully yours, 

"Ralston J. Markowe." 

What Harden-Hickey thought of this is not 
known, but as two weeks before he received 
it he had written Markowe, asking him by 
what authority he represented the Royalists 
of Honolulu, it seems evident that when the 
crown of Hawaii was first proffered him he 
did not at once spurn it. 

He now was in the peculiar position of 
being a deposed king of an island in the South 
Atlantic, which had been taken from him, and 
king-elect of an island in the Pacific, which was 
his if he could take it. 

This was in August of 1895. For the two 
years following, Harden-Hickey was a sol- 
dier of misfortunes. Having lost his island 
kingdom, he could no longer occupy himself 

66 



BARON HARDEN-HICKEY 

with plans for its improvement. It had been 
his toy. They had taken it from him, and the 
loss and the ridicule which followed hurt him 
bitterly. 

And for the lands he really owned in Mex- 
ico and California, and which, if he were to 
live in comfort, it was necessary he should 
sell, he could find no purchaser ; and, moreover, 
having quarrelled with his father-in-law, he 
had cut or! his former supply of money. The 
need of it pinched him cruelly. 

The advertised cause of this quarrel was 
sufficiently characteristic to be the real one. 
Moved by the attack of Great Britain upon 
his principality, Harden-Hickey decided upon 
reprisals. It must be remembered that always 
he was more Irish than French. On paper he 
organized an invasion of England from Ire- 
land, the home of his ancestors. It was be- 
cause Flagler refused to give him money for 
this adventure that he broke with him. His 
friends say this was the real reason of the 
quarrel, which was a quarrel on the side of 
Harden-Hickey alone. 

And there were other, more intimate troub- 
les. While not separated from his wife, he 

67 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

now was seldom in her company. When the 
Baroness was in Paris, Harden-Hickey was in 
San Francisco; when she returned to San 
Francisco, he was in Mexico. The fault seems 
to have been his. He was greatly admired 
by pretty women. His daughter by his first 
wife, now a very beautiful girl of sixteen, 
spent much time with her stepmother; and 
when not on his father's ranch in Mexico, his 
son also, for months together, was at her side. 
The husband approved of this, but he himself 
saw his wife infrequently. Nevertheless, early 
in the spring of 1898 the Baroness leased a 
house in Brockton Square, in Riverside, Cal., 
where it was understood by herself and by 
her friends, her husband would join her. At 
that time in Mexico he was trying to dispose 
of a large tract of land. Had he been able to 
sell it, the money for a time would have kept 
one even of his extravagancies contentedly 
rich. At least, he would have been independent 
of his wife and of her father. Up to February 
of 1898 his obtaining this money seemed prob- 
able. 

Early in that month the last prospective 
purchaser decided not to buy. 

68 



BARON HARDEN-HICKEY 

There is no doubt that had Harden-Hickey 
then turned to his father-in-law, that gentle- 
man, as he had done before, would have opened 
an account for him. 

But the Prince of Trinidad felt he could no 
longer beg, even for the money belonging to 
his wife, from the man he had insulted. He 
could no longer ask his wife to intercede for 
him. He was without money of his own, 
without the means of obtaining it; from his 
wife he had ceased to expect even sympathy, 
and from the world he knew, the fact that he 
was a self-made king caused him always to 
be pointed out with ridicule as a charlatan, as 
a jest. 

The soldier of varying fortunes, the duellist 
and dreamer, the devout Catholic and de- 
vout Buddhist, saw the forty-third year of 
his life only as the meeting-place of many 
fiascos. 

His mind was tormented with imaginary 
wrongs, imaginary slights, imaginary failures. 

This young man, who could paint pictures, 
write books, organize colonies over-sea, and 
with a sword pick the buttons from a waist- 
coat, forgot the twenty good years still before 

6 9 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

him; forgot that men loved him for the mis- 
takes he had made; that in parts of the great 
city of Paris his name was still spoken fondly, 
still was famous and familiar. 

In his book on the " Ethics of Suicide," for 
certain hard places in life he had laid down an 
inevitable rule of conduct. 

As he saw it he had come to one of those 
hard places, and he would not ask of others 
what he himself would not perform. 

From Mexico he set out for California, but 
not to the house his wife had prepared for 
him. Instead, on February 9, 1898, at El 
Paso, he left the train and registered at a 
hotel. 

At 7.30 in the evening he went to his room, 
and when, on the following morning, they 
kicked in the door, they found him stretched 
rigidly upon the bed, like one lying in state, 
with, near his hand, a half-emptied bottle of 
poison. 

On a chair was pinned this letter to his 
wife : 

" My Dearest — No news from you, although you 
have had plenty of time to write. Harvey has written 
me that he has no one in view at present to buy my 

70 



BARON HARDEN-HICKEY 

land. Well, I shall have tasted the cup of bitterness 
to the very dregs, but I do not complain. Good-by. 
I forgive you your conduct toward me and trust you 
will be able to forgive yourself. I prefer to be a dead 
gentleman to a living blackguard like your father." 

And when they searched his open trunk 
for something that might identify the body 
on the bed, they found the crown of Trini- 
dad. 

You can imagine it: the mean hotel bed- 
room, the military figure with its white face 
and mustache, " a la Louis Napoleon/' at rest 
upon the pillow, the startled drummers and 
chambermaids peering in from the hall, and the 
landlord, or coroner, or doctor, with a bewil- 
dered countenance, lifting to view the royal 
crown of gilt and velvet. 

The other actors in this, as Harold Frederic 
called it, " Opera Bouffe Monarchy," are still 
living. 

The Baroness Harden-Hickey makes her 
home in this country. 

The Count de la Boissiere, ex-Minister of 
Foreign Affairs, is still a leader of the French 
colony in New York, and a prosperous com- 
mission merchant with a suite of offices on 

v 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

Fifty-fourth Street. By the will of Harden- 
Hickey he is executor of his estate, guardian 
of his children, and what, for the purpose of 
this article, is of more importance, in his 
hands lies the future of the kingdom of Trini- 
dad. When Harden-Hickey killed himself the 
title to the island was in dispute. Should 
young Harden-Hickey wish to claim it, it still 
would be in dispute. Meanwhile by the will 
of the First James, De la Boissiere is appointed 
perpetual regent, a sort of " receiver," and 
executor of the principality. 

To him has been left a royal decree signed 
and sealed, but blank. In the will the power 
to fill in this blank with a statement showing 
the final disposition of the island has been 
bestowed upon De la Boissiere. 

So, some day, he may proclaim the acces- 
sion of a new king, and give a new lease of 
life to the kingdom of which Harden-Hickey 
dreamed. 

But unless his son, or wife, or daughter, 

should assert his or her rights, which is not 

likely to happen, so ends the dynasty of James 

the First of Trinidad, Baron of the Holy 

Roman Empire. 

72 




Baron Harden-Hickey, King James I. of Trinidad. 



BARON HARDEN-HICKEY 

To the wise ones in America he was a fool, 
and they laughed at him; to the wiser ones, 
he was a clever rascal who had evolved a new 
real estate scheme and was out to rob the 
people — and they respected him. To my 
mind, of them all, Harden-Hickey was the 
wisest. 

Granted one could be serious, what could be 
more delightful than to be your own king on 
your own island? 

The comic paragraphers, the business men 
of "hard, common sense," the captains of in- 
dustry who laughed at him and his national 
resources of buried treasure, turtles' eggs, 
and guano, with his bodyguard of Zouaves, 
and his Grand Cross of Trinidad, certainly 
possessed many things that Harden-Hickey 
lacked. But they in turn lacked the things 
that made him happy ; the power to " make 
believe/' the love of romance, the touch of 
adventure that plucked him by the sleeve. 

When, as boys, we used to say : " Let's pre- 
tend we're pirates," as a man, Harden-Hickey 
begged : " Let's pretend I'm a king." 

But the trouble was, the other boys had 
grown up and would not pretend. 

73 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

For some reason his end always reminds 
me of the closing line of Pinero's play, when 
the adventuress, Mrs. Tanqueray, kills her- 
self, and her virtuous stepchild says : " If we 
had only been kinder ! " 



74 



Ill 

WINSTON SPENCER CHURCHILL 

IN the strict sense of the phrase, a soldier 
of fortune is a man who for pay, or for 
the love of adventure, fights under the flag of 
any country. 

In the bigger sense he is the kind of man 
who in any walk of life makes his own fortune, 
who when he sees it coming, leaps to meet it, 
and turns it to his advantage. 

Than Winston Spencer Churchill to-day 
there are few young men — and he is a very 
young man — who have met more varying fort- 
unes, and none who has more frequently bent 
them to his own advancement. To him it has 
been indifferent whether, at the moment, the 
fortune seemed good or evil, in the end always 
it was good. 

As a boy officer, when other subalterns were 
playing polo, and at the Gaiety Theatre at- 
tending night school, he ran away to Cuba 

75 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

and fought with the Spaniards. For such a 
breach of military discipline, any other officer 
would have been court-martialed. Even his 
friends feared that by his foolishness his career 
in the army was at an end. Instead, his esca- 
pade was made a question in the House of 
Commons, and the fact brought him such pub- 
licity that the Daily Graphic paid him hand- 
somely to write on the Cuban Revolution, and 
the Spanish Government rewarded him with 
the Order of Military Merit. 

At the very outbreak of the Boer War he 
was taken prisoner. It seemed a climax of 
misfortune. With his brother officers he had 
hoped in that campaign to acquit himself with 
credit, and that he should lie inactive in Pre- 
toria appeared a terrible calamity. To the 
others, who, through many heart-breaking 
months, suffered imprisonment, it continued 
to be a calamity. But within six weeks of his 
capture Churchill escaped, and, after many 
adventures, rejoined his own army to find that 
the calamity had made him a hero. 

When after the battle of Omdurman, in his 

book on "The River War," he attacked Lord 

Kitchener, those who did not like him, and 

76 




Winston Churchill. 

In the uniform of the Fourth Queen's Own Hussars, at the 
age of twenty-one, when he fought with the Spaniards. 



WINSTON SPENCER CHURCHILL 

they were many, said : " That's the end of 
Winston in the army. He'll never get another 
chance to criticise K. of K." 

But only two years later the chance came, 
when, no longer a subaltern, but as a member 
of the House of Commons, he patronized 
Kitchener by defending him from the attacks 
of others. Later, when his assaults upon the 
leaders of his own party closed to him, even 
in his own constituency, the Conservative de- 
bating clubs, again his ill-wishers said : " This 
is the end. He has ridiculed those who sit in 
high places. He has offended his cousin and 
patron, the Duke of Marlborough. Without 
political friends, without the influence and 
money of the Marlborough family he is a polit- 
ical nonentity." That was eighteen months 
ago. To-day, at the age of thirty-two, he is 
one of the leaders of the Government party, 
Under-Secretary for the Colonies, and with 
the Liberals the most popular young man in 
public life. 

Only last Christmas, at a banquet, Sir Ed- 
ward Grey, the new Foreign Secretary, said of 
him : " Mr. Winston Churchill has achieved 
distinction in at least five different careers — 

77 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

as a soldier, a war correspondent, a lecturer, 
an author, and last, but not least, as a politi- 
cian. I have understated it even now, for he 
has achieved two careers as a politician — one 
on each side of the House. His first career 
on the Government side was a really distin- 
guished career. I trust the second will be 
even more distinguished — and more pro- 
longed. The remarkable thing is that he has 
done all this when, unless appearances very 
much belie him, he has not reached the age of 
sixty-four, which is the minimum age at which 
the politician ceases to be young." 

Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was 
born thirty-two years ago, in November, 1874. 
By birth he is half-American. His father was 
Lord Randolph Churchill, and his mother was 
Jennie Jerome, of New York. On the father's 
side he is the grandchild of the seventh Duke 
of Marlborough, on the distaff side, of Leon- 
ard Jerome. 

To a student of heredity it would be inter- 
esting to try and discover from which of 
these ancestors Churchill drew those qualities 
which in him are most prominent, and which 
have led to his success. 

78 



WINSTON SPENCER CHURCHILL 

What he owes to his father and mother it 
is difficult to overestimate, almost as difficult 
as to overestimate what he has accomplished 
by his own efforts. 

He was not a child born a full-grown genius 
of commonplace parents. Rather his fate 
threatened that he should always be known as 
the son of his father. And certainly it was 
asking much of a boy that he should live up 
to a father who was one of the most conspicu- 
ous, clever, and erratic statesmen of the later 
Victorian era, and a mother who is as brilliant 
as she is beautiful. 

For at no time was the American wife con- 
tent to be merely ornamental. Throughout 
the political career of her husband she was his 
helpmate, and as an officer of the Primrose 
League, as an editor of the Anglo-Saxon 
Review, as, for many hot, weary months in 
Durban Harbor, the head of the hospital ship 
Maine, she has shown an acute mind and real 
executive power. At the polls many votes that 
would not respond to the arguments of the 
husband, and later of the son, were gained 
over to the cause by the charm and wit of the 
American woman. 

79 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

In his earlier days, if one can have days any 
earlier than those he now enjoys, Churchill 
was entirely influenced by two things: the 
tremendous admiration he felt for his father, 
which filled him with ambition to follow in his 
orbit, and the camaraderie of his mother, who 
treated him less like a mother than a sister 
and companion. 

Indeed, Churchill was always so precocious 
that I cannot recall the time when he was 
young enough to be Lady Randolph's son; 
certainly, I cannot recall the time when she 
was old enough to be his mother. 

When first I knew him he had passed 
through Harrow and Sandhurst and was a 
Second Lieutenant in the Queen's Own Hus- 
sars. He was just of age, but appeared much 
younger. 

He was below medium height, a slight, deli- 
cate-looking boy ; although, as a matter of fact, 
extremely strong, with blue eyes, many freck- 
les, and hair which threatened to be a decided 
red, but which now has lost its fierceness 
When he spoke it was with a lisp, which also 
has changed, and which now appears to be 
merely an intentional hesitation. 

So 



WINSTON SPENCER CHURCHILL 

His manner of speaking was nervous, eager, 
explosive. He used many gestures, some of 
which were strongly reminiscent of his father, 
of whom he, unlike most English lads, who 
shy at mentioning a distinguished parent, con- 
stantly spoke. 

He even copied his father in his little tricks 
of manner. Standing with hands shoved 
under the frock coat and one resting on each 
hip as though squeezing in the waist line; 
when seated, resting the elbows on the arms of 
the chair and nervously locking and unclasp- 
ing fingers, are tricks common to both. 

He then had and still has a most embarrass- 
ing habit of asking many questions ; embarrass- 
ing, sometimes, because the questions are so 
frank, and sometimes because they lay bare the 
wide expanse of one's own ignorance. 

At that time, although in his twenty-first 
year, this lad twice had been made a question 
in the House of Commons. 

That in itself had rendered him conspicuous. 
When you consider out of Great Britain's four 
hundred million subjects how many live, die, 
and are buried without at any age having 
drawn down upon themselves the anger of the 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

House of Commons, to have done so twice, 
before one has passed his twenty-first year, 
seems to promise a lurid future. 

The first time Churchill disturbed the august 
assemblage in which so soon he was to become 
a leader was when he " ragged " a brother 
subaltern named Bruce and cut up his saddle 
and accoutrements. The second time was 
when he ran away to Cuba to fight with the 
Spaniards. 

After this campaign, on the first night of 
his arrival in London, he made his maiden 
speech. He delivered it in a place of less dig- 
nity than the House of Commons, but one, 
throughout Great Britain and her colonies, as 
widely known and as well supported. This 
was the Empire Music Hall. 

At the time Mrs. Ormiston Chant had raised 
objections to the presence in the Music Hall of 
certain young women, and had threatened, 
unless they ceased to frequent its promenade, 
to have the license of the Music Hall revoked. 
As a compromise, the management ceased sell- 
ing liquor, and on the night Churchill visited 
the place the bar in the promenade was barri- 
caded with scantling and linen sheets. With 



WINSTON SPENCER CHURCHILL 

the thirst of tropical Cuba still upon him, 
Churchill asked for a drink, which was denied 
him, and the crusade, which in his absence had 
been progressing fiercely, was explained. Any 
one else would have taken no for his answer, 
and have sought elsewhere for his drink. Not 
so Churchill. What he did is interesting, be- 
cause it was so extremely characteristic. Now 
he would not do it; then he was twenty-one. 

He scrambled to the velvet-covered top of 
the railing which divides the auditorium from 
the promenade, and made a speech. It was a 
plea in behalf of his " Sisters, the Ladies of 
the Empire Promenade. " 

* Where," he asked of the ladies themselves 
and of their escorts crowded below him in the 
promenade, " does the Englishman in London 
always find a welcome? Where does he first 
go when, battle-scarred and travel-worn, he 
reaches home? Who is always there to greet 
him with a smile, and join him in a drink? 
Who is ever faithful, ever true — the Ladies of 
the Empire Promenade." 

The laughter and cheers that greeted this, 
and the tears of the ladies themselves, natu- 
rally brought the performance on the stage to 

83 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

a stop, and the vast audience turned in the 
seats and boxes. 

They saw a little red-haired boy in evening 
clothes, balancing himself on the rail of the 
balcony, and around him a great crowd, cheer- 
ing, shouting, and bidding him " Go on ! " 

Churchill turned with delight to the larger 
audience, and repeated his appeal. The house 
shook with laughter and applause. 

The commissionaires and police tried to 
reach him and a good-tempered but very de- 
termined mob of well-dressed gentlemen and 
cheering girls fought them back. In triumph 
Churchill ended his speech by begging his 
hearers to give " fair play " to the women, 
and to follow him in a charge upon the bar- 
ricades. 

The charge was instantly made, the barri- 
cades were torn down, and the terrified man- 
agement ordered that drink be served to its 
victorious patrons. 

Shortly after striking this blow for the lib- 
erty of others, Churchill organized a dinner 
which illustrated the direction in which at that 
age his mind was working, and slid wed that 
his ambition was already abnormal. The din- 

8 4 



WINSTON SPENCER CHURCHILL 

ner was given to those of his friends and 
acquaintances who " were under twenty-one 
years of age, and who in twenty years would 
control the destinies of the British Empire." 

As one over the age limit, or because he did 
not consider me an empire-controlling force, 
on this great occasion, I was permitted to be 
present. But except that the number of in- 
cipient empire-builders was very great, that 
they were very happy, and that save the host 
himself none of them took his idea seriously, 
I would not call it an evening of historical in- 
terest. But the fact is interesting that of all 
the boys present, as yet, the host seems to be 
the only one who to any conspicuous extent 
is disturbing the destinies of Great Britain. 
However, the others can reply that ten of the 
twenty years have not yet passed. 

When he was twenty-three Churchill ob- 
tained leave of absence from his regiment, and 
as there was no other way open to him to see 
righting, as a correspondent he joined the 
Malakand Field Force in India. 

It may be truthfully said that by his pres- 
ence in that frontier war he made it and him- 
self famous. His book on that campaign is 

85 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

his best piece of war reporting. To the civil- 
ian reader it has all the delight of one of Kip- 
ling's Indian stories, and to writers on mili- 
tary subjects it is a model. But it is a model 
very few can follow^ and which Churchill him- 
self was unable to follow, for the reason that 
only once is it giveri'a man to be twenty-three 
years of age. 

The picturesque Hand-to-hand fighting, the 
night attacks, the charges up precipitous hills, 
the retreats made carrying the wounded under 
constant fire, which he witnessed and in which 
he bore his part, he never again can see with 
the same fresh and enthusiastic eyes. Then 
it was absolutely new, and the charm of the 
book and the value of the book are that with 
the intolerance of youth he attacks in the ser- 
vice evils that older men prefer to let lie, and 
that with the ingenuousness of youth he tells 
of things which to the veteran have become 
unimportant, or which through usage he is no 
longer even able to see. 

In his three later war books, the wonder of 
it, the horror of it, the quick admiration for 
brave deeds and daring men, give place, in 
" The River War," to the critical point of 

86 



WINSTON SPENCER CHURCHILL 

view of the military expert, and in his two 
books on the Boer War to the rapid impres- 
sions of the journalist. In these latter books 
he tells you of battles he has seen, in the first 
one he made you see them. 

For his services with the Malakand Field 
Force he received the campaign medal with 
clasp, and, " in despatches/' Brigadier-Gen- 
eral Jeffreys praises " the courage and reso- 
lution of Lieutenant W. L. S. Churchill, 
Fourth Hussars, with the force as corre- 
spondent of the Pioneer J' 

From the operations around Malakand, he 
at once joined Sir William Lockhart as orderly 
officer, and with the Tirah Expedition went 
through that campaign. 

For this his Indian medal gained a second 
clasp. 

This was in the early part of 1898. In spite 
of the time taken up as an officer and as a cor- 
respondent, he finished his book on the Mala- 
kand Expedition, and then, as it was evident 
Kitchener would soon attack Khartum, he 
jumped across to Egypt and again as a corre- 
spondent took part in the advance upon that 
city. 

87 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

Thus, in one year, he had seen service in 
three campaigns. 

On the day of the battle his luck followed 
him. Kitchener had attached him to the 
Twenty-first Lancers, and it will be remem- 
bered the event of the battle was the charge 
made by that squadron. It was no canter, no 
easy " pig-sticking " ; it was a fight to get in 
and a fight to get out, with frenzied followers 
of the Khalifa hanging to the bridle reins, 
hacking at the horses' hamstrings, and slash- 
ing and firing pointblank at the troopers. 
Churchill was in that charge. He received the 
medal with clasp. 

Then he returned home and wrote " The 
River War." This book is the last word on 
the campaigns up the Nile. From the death 
of Gordon in Khartum to the capture of the 
city by Kitchener, it tells the story of the many 
gallant fights, the wearying failures, the many 
expeditions into the hot, boundless desert, the 
long, slow progress toward the final winning 
of the Sudan. 

The book made a distinct sensation. It was 
a work that one would expect from a Lieuten- 
ant-General, when, after years of service in 

88 



WINSTON SPENCER CHURCHILL 

Egypt, he laid down his sword to pen the story 
of his life's work. From a Second Lieutenant, 
who had been on the Nile hardly long enough 
to gain the desert tan, it was a revelation. As 
a contribution to military history it was so val- 
uable that for the author it made many ad- 
mirers, but on account of his criticisms of his 
superior officers it gained him even more 
enemies. 

This is a specimen of the kind of thing that 
caused the retired army officer to sit up and 
choke with apoplexy: 

" General Kitchener, who never spares him- 
self, cares little for others. He treated all men 
like machines, from the private soldiers, whose 
salutes he disdained, to the superior officers, 
whom he rigidly controlled. The comrade 
who had served with him and under him 
for many years, in peace and peril, was 
flung aside as soon as he ceased to be of 
use. The wounded Egyptian and even the 
wounded British soldier did not excite his 
interest. ,, 

When in the service clubs they read that, 
the veterans asked each other their favorite 

question of what is the army coming to, and 

8 9 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

to their own satisfaction answered it by point- 
ing out that when a lieutenant of twenty-four 
can reprimand the commanding general the 
army is going to the dogs. 

To the newspapers, hundreds of them, over 
their own signatures, on the service club sta- 
tionery, wrote violent, furious letters, and the 
newspapers themselves, besides the ordinary 
reviews, gave to the book editorial praise and 
editorial condemnation. 

Equally disgusted were the younger officers 
of the service. They nicknamed his book " A 
Subaltern's Advice to Generals/' and called 
Churchill himself a "Medal Snatcher." A 
medal snatcher is an officer who, whenever 
there is a rumor of war, leaves his men to the 
care of any one, and through influence in high 
places and for the sake of the campaign medal 
has himself attached to the expeditionary 
force. But Churchill never was a medal 
hunter. The routine of barrack life irked him, 
and in foreign parts he served his country far 
better than by remaining at home and inspect- 
ing awkward squads and attending guard 
mount. Indeed, the War Office could cover 

with medals the man who wrote " The Story 

90 



WINSTON SPENCER CHURCHILL 

of the Malakand Field Force" and "The 
River War " and still be in his debt. 

In October, 1898, a month after the battle 
of Omdurman, Churchill made his debut as a 
political speaker at minor meetings in Dover 
and Rotherhithe. History does not record 
that these first speeches set fire to the Channel. 
During the winter he finished and published 
his " River War," and in the August of the 
following summer, 1899, at a by-election, 
offered himself as Member of Parliament for 
Oldham. 

In the Daily Telegraph his letters from the 
three campaigns in India and Egypt had made 
his name known, and there was a general de- 
sire to hear him and to see him. In one who 
had attacked Kitchener of Khartum, the men 
of Oldham expected to find a stalwart veteran, 
bearded, and with a voice of command. When 
they were introduced to a small red-haired boy 
with a lisp, they refused to take him seriously. 
In England youth is an unpardonable thing. 
Lately, Curzon, Churchill, Edward Grey, 
Hugh Cecil, and others have made it less rep- 
rehensible. But, in spite of a vigorous cam- 
paign, in which Lady Randolph took an active 

91 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

part, Oldham decided it was not ready to 
accept young Churchill for a member. Later 
he was Oldham's only claim to fame. 

A week after he was defeated he sailed for 
South Africa, where war with the Boers was 
imminent. He had resigned from his regiment 
and went south as war correspondent for the 
Morning Post. 

Later in the war he held a commission as 
Lieutenant in the South African Light Horse, 
a regiment of irregular cavalry, and on the 
staffs of different generals acted as galloper 
and aide-de-camp. To this combination of 
duties, which was in direct violation of a rule 
of the War Office, his brother officers and his 
fellow correspondents objected; but, as in each 
of his other campaigns he had played this dual 
role, the press censors considered it a tradi- 
tional privilege, and winked at it. As a mat- 
ter of record, Churchill's soldiering never 
seemed to interfere with his writing, nor, in a 
fight, did his duty to his paper ever prevent 
him from mixing in as a belligerent. 

War was declared October 9th, and only a 

month later, while scouting in the armored 

train along the railroad line between Pieter- 

92 




Winston Churchill. 

In the uniform of lieutenant of South African Light Horse. 



WINSTON SPENCER CHURCHILL 

maritzburg and Colenso, the cars were derailed 
and Churchill was taken prisoner. 

The train was made up of three flat cars, 
two armored cars, and between them the en- 
gine, with three cars coupled to the cow- 
catcher and two to the tender. 

On the outward trip the Boers did not show 
themselves, but as soon as the English passed 
Frere station they rolled a rock on the track 
at a point where it was hidden by a curve. 
On the return trip, as the English approached 
this curve the Boers opened fire with artil- 
lery and pompoms. The engineer, in his 
eagerness to escape, rounded the curve at full 
speed, and, as the Boers had expected, hit the 
rock. The three forward cars were derailed, 
and one of them was thrown across the track, 
thus preventing the escape of the engine and 
the two rear cars. From these Captain Hal- 
dane, who was in command, with a detach- 
ment of the Dublins, kept up a steady fire on 
the enemy, while Churchill worked to clear the 
track. To assist him he had a company of 
Natal volunteers, and those who had not run 
away of the train hands and break-down crew. 
' We were not long left in the comparative 

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REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

safety of a railroad accident," Churchill writes 
to his paper. " The Boers' guns, swiftly 
changing their position, reopened fire from a 
distance of thirteen hundred yards before any 
one had got out of the stage of exclamations. 
The tapping rifle-fire spread along the hills, 
until it encircled the wreckage on three sides, 
and from some high ground on the opposite 
side of the line a third field-gun came into 
action." 

For Boer marksmen with Mausers and pom- 
poms, a wrecked railroad train at thirteen 
hundred yards was as easy a bull's-eye as the 
hands of the first baseman to the pitcher, and 
while the engine butted and snorted and the 
men with their bare hands tore at the massive 
beams of the freight car, the bullets and shells 
beat about them. 

" I have had in the last four years many 
strange and varied experiences," continues 
young Churchill, " but nothing was so thrill- 
ing as this; to wait and struggle among these 
clanging, rending iron-boxes, with the repeat- 
ed explosions of the shells, the noise of the 
projectiles striking the cars, the hiss as they 
passed in the air, the grunting and puffing of 

94 



WINSTON SPENCER CHURCHILL 

the engine — poor, tortured thing, hammered 
by at least a dozen shells, any one of which, 
by penetrating the boiler, might have made an 
end of all — the expectation of destruction as 
a matter of course, the realization of power- 
lessness — all this for seventy minutes by the 
clock, with only four inches of twisted iron 
between danger, captivity, and shame on one 
side — and freedom on the other." 

The " protected " train had proved a death- 
trap, and by the time the line was clear every 
fourth man was killed or wounded. Only 
the engine, with the more severely wounded 
heaped in the cab and clinging to its cow- 
catcher and foot-rails, made good its escape. 
Among those left behind, a Tommy, without 
authority, raised a handkerchief on his rifle, 
and the Boers instantly ceased firing and came 
galloping forward to accept surrender. There 
was a general stampede to escape. Seeing 
that Lieutenant Franklin was gallantly trying 
to hold his men, Churchill, who was safe on 
the engine, jumped from it and ran to his as- 
sistance. Of what followed, this is his own 
account : 

" Scarcely had the locomotive left me than 

95 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

I found myself alone in a shallow cutting, and 
none of our soldiers, who had all surrendered, 
to be seen. Then suddenly there appeared on 
the line at the end of the cutting two men not 
in uniform. ' Plate-layers/ I said to myself, 
and then, with a surge of realization, ' Boers.' 
My mind retains a momentary impression of 
these tall figures, full of animated movement, 
clad in dark flapping clothes, with slouch, 
storm-driven hats, posing their rifles hardly 
a hundred yards away. I turned and ran be- 
tween the rails of the track, and the only 
thought I achieved was this : ' Boer marks- 
manship.' 

" Two bullets passed, both within a foot, 
one on either side. I flung myself against the 
banks of the cutting. But they gave no cover. 
Another glance at the figures; one was now 
kneeling to aim. Again I darted forward. 
Again two soft kisses sucked in the air, but 
nothing struck me. I must get out of the cut- 
ting — that damnable corridor. I scrambled 
up the bank. The earth sprang up beside me, 
and a bullet touched my hand, but outside the 
cutting was a tiny depression. I crouched in 

this, struggling to get my wind. On the other 

9 6 



WINSTON SPENCER CHURCHILL 

side of the railway a horseman galloped up, 
shouting to me and waving his hand. He was 
scarcely forty yards off. With a rifle I could 
have killed him easily. I knew nothing of the 
white flag, and the bullets had made me sav- 
age. I reached down for my Mauser pistol. 
I had left it in the cab of the engine. Between 
me and the horseman there was a wire fence. 
Should I continue to fly ? The idea of another 
shot at such a short range decided me. Death 
stood before me, grim and sullen ; Death with- 
out his light-hearted companion, Chance. So 
I held up my hand, and, like Mr. Jorrocks's 
foxes, cried ' Capivy ! ' Then I was herded 
with the other prisoners in a miserable group, 
and about the same time I noticed that my hand 
was bleeding, and it began to pour with rain. 
' Two days before I had written to an offi- 
cer at home : ' There has been a great deal too 
much surrendering in this war, and I hope 
people who do so will not be encouraged.' " 

With other officers, Churchill was impris- 
oned in the State Model Schools, situated in 
the heart of Pretoria. It was distinctly char- 
acteristic that on the very day of his arrival 
he began to plan to escape. 

97 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

Toward this end his first step was to lose 
his campaign hat, which he recognized was 
too obviously the hat of an English officer. 
The burgher to whom he gave money to pur- 
chase him another innocently brought him a 
Boer sombrero. 

Before his chance to escape came a month 
elapsed, and the opportunity that then offered 
was less an opportunity to escape than to get 
himself shot. 

The State Model Schools were surrounded 
by the children's playgrounds, penned in by a 
high wall, and at night, while they were used 
as a prison, brilliantly lighted by electric lights. 
After many nights of observation, Churchill 
discovered that while the sentries were pacing 
their beats there was a moment when to them 
a certain portion of the wall was in darkness. 
This was due to cross-shadows cast by the 
electric lights. On the other side of this wall 
there was a private house set in a garden rilled 
with bushes. Beyond this was the open street. 

To scale the wall was not difficult; the real 

danger lay in the fact that at no time were the 

sentries farther away than fifteen yards, and 

the chance of being shot by one or both of 

9 8 




Winston Churchill. 



As war correspondent in South Africa at the time of his capture. 



WINSTON SPENCER CHURCHILL 

them was excellent. To a brother officer 
Churchill confided his purpose, and together 
they agreed that some night when the sen- 
tries had turned from the dark spot on the 
wall they would scale it and drop among the 
bushes in the garden. After they reached the 
garden, should they reach it alive, what they 
were to do they did not know. How they were 
to proceed through the streets and out of the 
city, how they were to pass unchallenged un- 
der its many electric lights and before the illu- 
minated shop windows, how to dodge patrols, 
and how to find their way through two hun- 
dred and eighty miles of a South African 
wilderness, through an utterly unfamiliar, un- 
friendly, and sparsely settled country into Por- 
tuguese territory and the coast, they left to 
chance. But with luck they hoped to cover the 
distance in a fortnight, begging corn at the 
Kaffir kraals, sleeping by day and marching 
under cover of the darkness. 

They agreed to make the attempt on the 
nth of December, but on that night the sen- 
tries did not move from the only part of the 
wall that was in shadow. On the night fol- 
lowing, at the last moment, something de- 

99 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

layed Churchill's companion, and he essayed 
the adventure alone. He writes : " Tuesday, 
the 1 2th! Anything was better than further 
suspense. Again night came. Again the din- 
ner bell sounded. Choosing my opportunity, 
I strolled across the quadrangle and secreted 
myself in one of the offices. Through a chink 
I watched the sentries. For half an hour they 
remained stolid and obstructive. Then sud- 
denly one turned and walked up to his com- 
rade and they began to talk. Their backs 
were turned. I darted out of my hiding-place 
and ran to the wall, seized the top with my 
hands and drew myself up. Twice I let my- 
self down again in sickly hesitation, and then 
with a third resolve scrambled up. The top 
was flat. Lying on it, I had one parting 
glimpse of the sentries, still talking, still with 
their backs turned, but, I repeat, still fifteen 
yards away. Then I lowered myself into the 
adjoining garden and crouched among the 
shrubs. I was free. The first step had been 
taken, and it was irrevocable." 

Churchill discovered that the house into the 
garden of which he had so unceremoniously 
introduced himself was brilliantly lighted, and 

IOO 



WINSTON SPENCER CHURCHILL 

that the owner was giving a party. At one 
time two of the guests walked into the garden 
and stood, smoking and chatting, in the path 
within a few yards of him. 

Thinking his companion might yet join 
him, for an hour he crouched in the bushes, 
until from the other side of the wall he heard 
the voices of his friend and of another officer. 

" It's all up ! " his friend whispered. 
Churchill coughed tentatively. The two 
voices drew nearer. To confuse the sentries, 
should they be listening, the one officer talked 
nonsense, laughed loudly, and quoted Latin 
phrases, while the other, in a low and distinct 
voice, said : " I cannot get out. The sentry 
suspects. It's all up. Can you get back 
again ? " 

To go back was impossible. Churchill now 
felt that in any case he was sure to be recap- 
tured and decided he would, as he expresses 
it, at least have a run for his money. 

" I shall go on alone," he whispered. 

He heard the footsteps of his two friends 
move away from him across the play-yard. 
At the same moment he stepped boldly out 
into the garden, and passing the open windows 

IOI 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

of the house, walked down the gravel path to 
the street. Not five yards from the gate stood 
a sentry. Most of those guarding the school- 
house knew him by sight, but Churchill did 
not turn his head, and whether the sentry rec- 
ognized him or not, he could not tell. 

For a hundred feet he walked as though on 
ice, inwardly shrinking as he waited for the 
sharp challenge, and the rattle of the Mauser 
thrown to the " Ready." His nerves were 
leaping, his heart in his throat, his spine of 
water. And then, as he continued to advance, 
and still no tumult pursued him, he quickened 
his pace and turned into one of the main streets 
of Pretoria. The sidewalks were crowded 
with burghers, but no one noticed him. This 
was due probably to the fact that the Boers 
wore no distinctive uniform, and that with 
them in their commandoes were many Eng- 
lish Colonials who wore khaki riding-breeches, 
and many Americans, French, Germans, and 
Russians, in every fashion of semi-uniform. 

If observed, Churchill was mistaken for one 
of these, and the very openness of his move- 
ments saved him from suspicion. 

Straight through the town he walked until 



WINSTON SPENCER CHURCHILL 

he reached the suburbs, the open veldt, and a 
railroad track. As he had no map or com- 
pass he knew this must be his only guide, but 
he knew also that two railroads left Pretoria, 
the one along which he had been captured, to 
Pietermaritzburg, and the other, the one lead- 
ing to the coast and freedom. Which of the 
two this one was he had no idea, but he took his 
chance, and a hundred yards beyond a station 
waited for the first outgoing train. About 
midnight, a freight stopped at the station, and 
after it had left it and before it had again 
gathered headway, Churchill swung himself 
up upon it, and stretched out upon a pile of 
coal. Throughout the night the train contin- 
ued steadily toward the east, and so told him 
that it was the one he wanted, and that he was 
on his way to the neutral territory of Portugal. 
Fearing the daylight, just before the sun 
rose, as the train was pulling up a steep grade, 
he leaped off into some bushes. All that day 
he lay hidden, and the next night he walked. 
He made but little headway. As all stations 
and bridges were guarded, he had to make 
long detours, and the tropical moonlight pre- 
vented him from crossing in the open. In this 

103 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

way, sleeping by day, walking by night, beg- 
ging food from the Kaffirs, five days passed. 

Meanwhile, his absence had been at once 
discovered, and, by the Boers, every effort 
was being made to retake him. Telegrams 
giving his description were sent along both 
railways, three thousand photographs of him 
were distributed, each car of every train was 
searched, and in different parts of the Trans- 
vaal men who resembled him were being ar- 
rested. It was said he had escaped dressed 
as a woman; in the uniform of a Transvaal 
policeman whom he had bribed; that he had 
never left Pretoria, and that in the disguise 
of a waiter he was concealed in the house of 
a British sympathizer. On the strength of 
this rumor the houses of all suspected persons 
were searched. 

In the Volksstem it was pointed out as a sig- 
nificant fact that a week before his escape 
Churchill had drawn from the library Mill's 
" Essay on Liberty." 

In England and over all British South 

Africa the escape created as much interest as 

it did in Pretoria. Because the attempt showed 

pluck, and because he had outwitted the 

104 



WINSTON SPENCER CHURCHILL 

enemy, Churchill for the time became a sort 
of popular hero, and to his countrymen his 
escape gave as much pleasure as it was a cause 
of chagrin to the Boers. 

But as days passed and nothing was heard 
of him, it was feared he had lost himself in the 
Machadodorp Mountains, or had succumbed 
to starvation, or, in the jungle toward the 
coast, to fever, and congratulations gave way 
to anxiety. 

The anxiety was justified, for at this time 
Churchill was in a very bad way. During the 
month in prison he had obtained but little ex- 
ercise. The lack of food and of water, the cold 
by night and the terrific heat by day, the 
long stumbling marches in the darkness, the 
mental effect upon an extremely nervous, high- 
strung organization of being hunted, and of 
having to hide from his fellow men, had worn 
him down to a condition almost of collapse. 

Even though it were neutral soil, in so ex- 
hausted a state he dared not venture into the 
swamps and waste places of the Portuguese 
territory; and, sick at heart as well as sick in 
body, he saw no choice left him save to give 
himself up. 

105 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

But before doing so he carefully prepared 
a tale which, although most improbable, he 
hoped might still conceal his identity and aid 
him to escape by train across the border. 

One night after days of wandering he found 
himself on the outskirts of a little village near 
the boundary line of the Transvaal and Portu- 
guese territory. Utterly unable to proceed 
further, he crawled to the nearest zinc-roofed 
shack, and, fully prepared to surrender, 
knocked at the door. It was opened by a 
rough-looking, bearded giant, the first white 
man to whom in many days Churchill had 
dared address himself. 

To him, without hope, he feebly stammered 
forth the speech he had rehearsed. The man 
listened with every outward mark of disbelief. 
At Churchill himself he stared with open sus- 
picion. Suddenly he seized the boy by the 
shoulder, drew him inside the hut, and barred 
the door. 

" You needn't lie to me," he said. " You 
are Winston Churchill, and I — am the only 
Englishman in this village." 

The rest of the adventure was comparatively 

easy. The next night his friend in need, an 

106 



WINSTON SPENCER CHURCHILL 

engineer named Howard, smuggled Churchill 
into a freight-car, and hid him under sacks 
of some soft merchandise. 

At Komatie-Poort, the station on the border, 
for eighteen hours the car in which Churchill 
lay concealed was left in the sun on a siding, 
and before it again started it was searched, but 
the man who was conducting the search lifted 
only the top layer of sacks, and a few minutes 
later Churchill heard the hollow roar of the 
car as it passed over the bridge, and knew that 
he was across the border. 

Even then he took no chances, and for 
two days more lay hidden at the bottom of 
the car. 

When at last he arrived in Lorenzo Mar- 
ques he at once sought out the English Consul, 
who, after first mistaking him for a stoker 
from one of the ships in the harbor, gave him 
a drink, a bath, and a dinner. 

As good luck would have it, the Induna was 

leaving that night for Durban, and, escorted 

by a bodyguard of English residents armed 

with revolvers, and who were taking no 

chances of his recapture by the Boer agents, 

he was placed safely on board. Two days later 

107 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

he arrived at Durban, where he was received 
by the Mayor, the populace, and a brass band 
playing: "Britons Never, Never, Never shall 
be Slaves ! " 

For the next month Churchill was bom- 
barded by letters and telegrams from every 
part of the globe; some invited him to com- 
mand filibustering expeditions, others sent him 
woollen comforters, some forwarded photo- 
graphs of himself to be signed, others photo- 
graphs of themselves, possibly to be admired, 
others sent poems, and some bottles of 
whiskey. 

One admirer wrote: "My congratulations 
on your wonderful and glorious deeds, which 
will send such a thrill of pride and enthusiasm 
through Great Britain and the United States 
of America, that the Anglo-Saxon race will 
be irresistible." 

Lest so large an order as making the Anglo- 
Saxon race irresistible might turn the head of 
a subaltern, an antiseptic cablegram was also 
sent him, from London, reading : 

" Best friends here hope you won't go making fur- 
ther ass of yourself. McNeill." 

K>8 




.— i a, 



WINSTON SPENCER CHURCHILL 

One day in camp we counted up the price 
per word of this cablegram, and Churchill 
was delighted to find that it must have cost the 
man who sent it five pounds. 

On the day of his arrival in Durban, with 
the cheers still in the air, Churchill took the 
first train to " the front," then at Colenso. 
Another man might have lingered. After a 
month's imprisonment and the hardships of 
the escape, he might have been excused for 
delaying twenty-four hours to taste the sweets 
of popularity and the flesh-pots of the Queen 
Hotel. But if the reader has followed this 
brief biography he will know that to have done 
so would have been out of the part. This 
characteristic of Churchill's to get on to the 
next thing explains his success. He has no 
time to waste on post mortems, he takes none 
to rest on his laurels. 

As a war correspondent and officer he con- 
tinued with Buller until the relief of Lady- 
smith, and with Roberts until the fall of Pre- 
toria. He was in many actions, in all the big 
engagements, and came out of the war with 
another medal and clasps for six battles. 

On his return to London he spent the sum- 
109 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

mer finishing his second book on the war, and 
in October at the general election as a 
" khaki " candidate, as those were called who 
favored the war, again stood for Oldham. 
This time, with his war record to help him, he 
wrested from the Liberals one of Oldham's 
two seats. He had been defeated by thirteen 
hundred votes; he was elected by a majority 
of two hundred and twenty-seven. 

The few months that intervened between 
his election and the opening of the new Par- 
liament were snatched by Churchill for a lect- 
uring tour at home, and in the United States 
and Canada. His subject was the war and 
his escape from Pretoria. 

When he came to this country half of the 
people here were in sympathy with the Boers, 
and did not care to listen to what they sup- 
posed would be a strictly British version of 
the war. His manager, without asking per- 
mission of those whose names he advertised, 
organized for Churchill's first appearance in 
various cities, different reception committees. 

Some of those whose names, without their 
consent, were used for these committees, wrote 
indignantly to the papers, saying that while 

no 



WINSTON SPENCER CHURCHILL 

for Churchill, personally, they held every re- 
spect, they objected to being used to advertise 
an anti-Boer demonstration. 

While this was no fault of Churchill's, who, 
until he reached this country knew nothing of 
it, it was neither for him nor for the success 
of his tour the best kind of advance work. 

During the fighting to relieve Ladysmith, 
with General Buller's force, Churchill and I 
had again been together, and later when I 
joined the Boer army, at the Zand River Bat- 
tle, the army with which he was a correspond- 
ent had chased the army with which I was 
a correspondent, forty miles. I had been one 
of those who refused to act on his reception 
committee, and he had come to this country 
with a commission from twenty brother offi- 
cers to shoot me on sight. But in his lecture 
he was using the photographs I had taken of 
the scene of his escape, and which I had sent 
him from Pretoria as a souvenir, and when 
he arrived I was at the hotel to welcome him, 
and that same evening, three hours after mid- 
night he came, in a blizzard, pounding at our 
door for food and drink. What is a little thing 
like a war between friends ? 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

During his " tour," except of hotels, parlor- 
cars, and " Lyceums, " he saw very little of 
this country or of its people, and they saw very 
little of him. On the trip, which lasted about 
two months, he cleared ten thousand dollars. 
This, to a young man almost entirely depend- 
ent for an income upon his newspaper work 
and the sale of his books, nearly repaid him 
for the two months of " one night stands." On 
his return to London he took his seat in the 
new Parliament. 

It was a coincidence that he entered Parlia- 
ment at the same age as did his father. With 
two other members, one born six days earlier 
than himself, he enjoyed the distinction of 
being among the three youngest members of 
the new House. 

The fact did not seem to appall him. In the 
House it is a tradition that young and ambi- 
tious members sit "below " the gangway; the 
more modest and less assured are content to 
place themselves " above " it, at a point far- 
thest removed from the leaders. 

On the day he was sworn in there was much 
curiosity to see where Churchill would elect 
to sit. In his own mind there was apparently 



WINSTON SPENCER CHURCHILL 

no doubt. After he had taken the oath, signed 
his name, and shaken the hand of the Speaker, 
without hesitation he seated himself on the 
bench next to the Ministry. Ten minutes 
later, so a newspaper of the day describes it, 
he had cocked his hat over his eyes, shoved 
his hands into his trousers pockets, and was 
lolling back eying the veterans of the House 
with critical disapproval. 

His maiden speech was delivered in May, 
1 90 1, in reply to David Lloyd George, who 
had attacked the conduct of British soldiers 
in South Africa. Churchill defended them, 
and in a manner that from all sides gained 
him honest admiration. In the course of the 
debate he produced and read a strangely 
apropos letter which, fifteen years before, 
had been written by his father to Lord Salis- 
bury. His adroit use of this filled H. W. 
Massingham, the editor of the Daily News, 
with enthusiasm. Nothing in parliamentary 
tactics, he declared, since Mr. Gladstone died, 
had been so clever. He proclaimed that 
Churchill would be Premier. John Dillon, the 
Nationalist leader, said he never before had 
seen a young man, by means of his maiden 

"3 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

effort, spring into the front rank of parlia- 
mentary speakers. He promised that the Irish 
members would ungrudgingly testify to his 
ability and honesty of purpose. Among others 
to at once recognize the rising star was T. P. 
O'Connor, himself for many years of the par- 
liamentary firmament one of the brightest stars. 
In M. A. P. he wrote: " I am inclined to think 
that the dash of American blood which he has 
from his mother has been an improvement 
on the original stock, and that Mr. Winston 
Churchill may turn out to be a stronger and 
abler politician than his father. ,, 

It was all a part of Churchill's " luck " that 
when he entered Parliament the subject in 
debate was the conduct of the war. 

Even in those first days of his career in the 
House, in debates where angels feared to 
tread, he did not hesitate to rush in, but this 
subject was one on which he spoke with knowl- 
edge. Over the older men who were forced 
to quote from hearsay or from what they had 
read, Churchill had the tremendous advantage 
of being able to protest : " You only read of 
that. I was there. I saw it." 

In the House he became at once one of the 
114 



WINSTON SPENCER CHURCHILL 

conspicuous and picturesque figures, one dear 
to the heart of the caricaturist, and one from 
the stranger's gallery most frequently pointed 
out. He was called " the spoiled child of the 
House/' and there were several distinguished 
gentlemen who regretted they were forced to 
spare the rod. Broderick, the Secretary for 
War, was one of these. Of him and of his re- 
cruits in South Africa, Churchill spoke with 
the awful frankness of the enfant terrible. 
And although he addressed them more with 
sorrow than with anger, to Balfour and Cham- 
berlain he daily administered advice and re- 
proof, while mere generals and field-marshals, 
like Kitchener and Roberts, blushing under 
new titles, were held up for public reproof 
and briefly but severely chastened. Nor, when 
he saw Lord Salisbury going astray, did he 
hesitate in his duty to the country, but took 
the Prime Minister by the hand and gently 
instructed him in the way he should go. 

This did not tend to make him popular, but 
in spite of his unpopularity, in his speeches 
against national extravagancies he made so 
good a fight that he forced the Government, 
unwillingly, to appoint a committee to inves- 
ts 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

tigate the need of economy. For a beginner 
this was a distinct triumph. 

With Lord Hugh Cecil, Lord Percy, Ian 
Malcolm, and other clever young men, he 
formed inside the Conservative Party a little 
group that in its obstructive and independent 
methods was not unlike the Fourth Party of 
his father. From its leader and its filibuster- 
ing, guerilla-like tactics the men who com- 
posed it were nicknamed the " Hughligans. ,, 
The Hughligans were the most active critics 
of the Ministry and of all in their own party, 
and as members of the Free Food League 
they bitterly attacked the fiscal proposals 
of Mr. Chamberlain. When Balfour made 
Chamberlain's fight for fair trade, or for what 
virtually was protection, a measure of the Con- 
servatives, the lines of party began to break, 
and men were no longer Conservatives or 
Liberals, but Protectionists or Free Traders. 

Against this Churchill daily protested, 
against Chamberlain, against his plan, against 
that plan being adopted by the Tory Party. 
By tradition, by inheritance, by instinct, 
Churchill was a Tory. 

" I am a Tory," he said, " and I have as 

116 



WINSTON SPENCER CHURCHILL 

much right in the party as has anybody else, 
certainly as much as certain people from Bir- 
mingham. They can't turn us out, and we, 
the Tory Free Traders, have as much right 
to dictate the policy of the Conservative Party 
as have any reactionary Fair Traders." In 
1904 the Conservative Party already recog- 
nized Churchill as one working outside the 
breastworks. Just before the Easter vacation 
of that year, when he rose to speak a remark- 
able demonstration was made against him by 
his Unionist colleagues, all of them rising and 
leaving the House. 

To the Liberals who remained to hear him 
he stated that if to his constituents his opin- 
ions were obnoxious, he was ready to resign 
his seat. It then was evident he would go 
over to the Liberal Party. Some thought he 
foresaw which way the tidal wave was com- 
ing, and to being slapped down on the beach 
and buried in the sand, he preferred to be swept 
forward on its crest. Others believed he left 
the Conservatives because he could not hon- 
estly stomach the taxed food offered by Mr. 
Chamberlain. 

In any event, if he were to be blamed for 
117 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

changing from one party to the other, he was 
only following the distinguished example set 
him by Gladstone, Disraeli, Harcourt, and his 
own father. 

It was at the time of this change that he was 
called " the best hated man in England," but 
the Liberals welcomed him gladly, and the 
National Liberal Club paid him the rare com- 
pliment of giving in his honor a banquet. 
There were present two hundred members. 
Up to that time this dinner was the most 
marked testimony to his importance in the 
political world. It was about then, a year 
since, that he prophesied : " Within nine months 
there will come such a tide and deluge as will 
sweep through England and Scotland, and 
completely wash out and effect a much-needed 
spring cleaning in Downing Street." 

When the deluge came, at Manchester, Mr. 
Balfour was defeated, and Churchill was vic- 
torious, and when the new Government was 
formed the tidal wave landed Churchill in the 
office of Under-Secretary for the Colonies. 

While this is being written the English pa- 
pers say that within a month he again will be 
promoted. For this young man of thirty the 

118 




Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill. 

British Under-Secretary for the Colonies. 



WINSTON SPENCER CHURCHILL 

only promotion remaining is a position in the 
Cabinet, in which august body men of fifty are 
considered young. 

His is a picturesque career. Of any man 
of his few years speaking our language, his 
career is probably the most picturesque. And 
that he is half an American gives all of us an 
excuse to pretend we share in his successes. 



119 



IV 

CAPTAIN PHILO NORTON McGIFFIN 

IN the Chinese-Japanese War the battle of 
the Yalu was the first battle fought be- 
tween warships of modern make, and, except 
on paper, neither the men who made them nor 
the men who fought them knew what the 
ships could do, or what they might not do. 
For years every naval power had been build- 
ing these new engines of war, and in the battle 
which was to test them the whole world was 
interested. But in this battle Americans had 
a special interest, a human, family interest, 
for the reason that one of the Chinese squad- 
ron, which was matched against some of the 
same vessels of Japan which lately swept those 
of Russia from the sea, was commanded by 
a young graduate of the American Naval 
Academy. This young man, who, at the time 
of the battle of the Yalu, was thirty-three 
years old, was Captain Philo Norton McGif- 



CAPTAIN PHILO N. McGIFFIN 

fin. So it appears that five years before our 
fleet sailed to victory in Manila Bay another 
graduate of Annapolis, and one twenty years 
younger than in 1898 was Admiral Dewey, 
had commanded in action a modern battle- 
ship, which, in tonnage, in armament, and in 
the number of the ships' company, far out- 
classed Dewey's Olympia. 

McGiffin, who was born on December 13, 
i860, came of fighting stock. Back in Scot- 
land the family is descended from the Clan 
MacGregor and the Clan MacAlpine. 

" These are Clan- Alpine's warriors true, 
And, Saxon — I am Roderick Dhu." 

McGiffin's great-grandfather, born in Scot- 
land, emigrated to this country and settled in 
" Little Washington," near Pittsburg, Pa. 
In the Revolutionary War he was a soldier. 
Other relatives fought in the War of 18 12, 
one of them holding a commission as major. 
McGiffin's own father was Colonel Norton 
McGiffin, who served in the Mexican War, 
and in the Civil War was Lieutenant-Colonel 
of the Eighty-fifth Pennsylvania Volunteers. 
So McGiffin inherited his love for arms. 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

In Washington he went to the high school 
and at the Washington Jefferson College had 
passed through his freshman year. But the 
honors that might accrue to him if he contin- 
ued to live on in the quiet and pretty old town 
of Washington did not tempt him. To escape 
into the world he wrote his Congressman, beg- 
ging him to obtain for him an appointment to 
Annapolis. The Congressman liked the letter, 
and wrote Colonel McGiffin to ask if the appli- 
cation of his son had his approval. Colonel 
McGiffin was willing, and in 1877 his son 
received his commission as cadet midshipman. 
I knew McGiffin only as a boy with whom 
in vacation time I went coon hunting in 
the woods outside of Washington. For his 
age he was a very tall boy, and in his mid- 
shipman undress uniform, to my youthful 
eyes, appeared a most bold and adventurous 
spirit. 

At Annapolis his record seems to show he 
was pretty much like other boys. According 
to his classmates, with all of whom I find he 
was very popular, he stood high in the prac- 
tical studies, such as seamanship, gunnery, 
navigation, and steam engineering, but in all 



CAPTAIN PHILO N. McGIFFIN 

else he was near the foot of the class, and in 
whatever escapade was risky and reckless he 
was always one of the leaders. To him dis- 
cipline was extremely irksome. He could 
maintain it among others, but when it applied 
to himself it bored him. On the floor of the 
Academy building on which was his room 
there was a pyramid of cannon balls — relics 
of the War of 1812. They stood at the head 
of the stairs, and one warm night, when he 
could not sleep, he decided that no one eise 
should do so, and, one by one, rolled the cannon 
balls down the stairs. They tore away the 
banisters and bumped through the wooden 
steps and leaped off into the lower halls. For 
any one who might think of ascending to dis- 
cover the motive power back of the bombard- 
ment they were extremely dangerous. But an 
officer approached McGiffin in the rear, and, 
having been caught in the act, he was sent to 
the prison ship. There he made good friends 
with his jailer, an old man-of-warsman named 
" Mike." He will be remembered by many 
naval officers who as midshipmen served on 
the Santee. McGiffin so won over Mike that 

when he left the ship he carried with him six 

123 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

charges of gunpowder. These he loaded into 
the six big guns captured in the Mexican 
War, which lay on the grass in the centre of 
the Academy grounds, and at midnight on the 
eve of July ist he fired a salute. It aroused 
the entire garrison, and for a week the empty 
window frames kept the glaziers busy. 

About 1878 or 1879 there was a famine in 
Ireland. The people of New York City con- 
tributed provisions for the sufferers, and to 
carry the supplies to Ireland the Government 
authorized the use of the old Constellation. 
At the time the voyage was to begin each 
cadet was instructed to consider himself as 
having been placed in command of the Con- 
stellation and to write a report on the prepa- 
rations made for the voyage, on the loading of 
the vessel, and on the distribution of the stores. 
This exercise was intended for the instruction 
of the cadets; first in the matter of seaman- 
ship and navigation, and second in making 
official reports. At that time it was a very 
difficult operation to get a gun out of the port 
of a vessel where the gun was on a covered 
deck. To do this the necessary tackles had to 

be rigged from the yard-arm and the yard and 

124 



CAPTAIN PHILO N. McGIFFIN 

mast properly braced and stayed, and then the 
lower block of the tackle carried in through 
the gun port, which, of course, gave the fall 
a very bad reeve. The first part of McGiffin's 
report dealt with a new method of dismount- 
ing the guns and carrying them through the 
gun ports, and so admirable was his plan, so 
simple and ingenious, that it was used when- 
ever it became necessary to dismount a gun 
from one of the old sailing ships. Having, 
however, offered this piece of good work, 
McGiffin's report proceeded to tell of the divi- 
sion of the ship into compartments that were 
filled with a miscellaneous assortment of stores, 
which included the old "fifteen puzzles," at 
that particular time very popular. The report 
terminated with a description of the joy of the 
famished Irish as they received the puzzle- 
boxes. At another time the cadets were re- 
quired to write a report telling of the sup- 
pression of the insurrection on the Isthmus 
of Panama. McGiffin won great praise for 
the military arrangements and disposition of 
his men, but, in the same report, he went on 
to describe how he armed them with a new 
gun known as Barnes's Rhetoric and told of 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

the havoc he wrought in the enemy's ranks 
when he fired these guns loaded with similes 
and metaphors and hyperboles. 

Of course, after each exhibition of this sort 
he was sent to the Santee and given an oppor- 
tunity to meditate. 

On another occasion, when one of the in- 
structors lectured to the cadets, he required 
them to submit a written statement embodying 
all that they could recall of what had been said 
at the lecture. One of the rules concerning 
this report provided that there should be no 
erasures or interlineations, but that when mis- 
takes were made the objectionable or incor- 
rect expressions should be included within 
parentheses; and that the matter so enclosed 
within parentheses would not be considered 
a part of the report. McGiffin wrote an ex- 
cellent resume of the lecture, but he inter- 
spersed through it in parentheses such words 
as " applause," " cheers/' " cat-calls/' and 
" groans," and as these words were enclosed 
within parentheses he insisted that they did 
not count, and made a very fair plea that 
he ought not to be punished for words which 

slipped in by mistake, and which he had offi- 

126 



CAPTAIN PHILO N. McGIFFIN 

cialiy obliterated by what he called oblivion 
marks. 

He was not always on mischief bent. On 
one occasion, when the house of a professor 
caught fire, McGiffin ran into the flames and 
carried out two children, for which act he was 
commended by the Secretary of the Navy. 

It was an act of Congress that determined 
that the career of McGiffin should be that of 
a soldier of fortune. This was a most unjust 
act, which provided that only as many mid- 
shipmen should receive commissions as on the 
warships there were actual vacancies. In 
those days, in 1884, our navy was very small. 
To-day there is hardly a ship having her full 
complement of officers, and the difficulty is not 
to get rid of those we have educated, but to 
get officers to educate. To the many boys 
who, on the promise that they would be officers 
of the navy, had worked for four years at the 
Academy and served two years at sea, the act 
was most unfair. Out of a class of about 
ninety, only the first twelve were given com- 
missions and the remaining eighty turned 
adrift upon the uncertain seas of civil life. As 

a sop, each was given one thousand dollars. 

127 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

McGiffin was not one of the chosen twelve. 
In the final examinations on the list he was 
well toward the tail. But without having stud- 
ied many things, and without remembering the 
greater part of them, no one graduates from 
Annapolis, even last on the list; and with his 
one thousand dollars in cash, McGiffin had also 
this six years of education at what was then 
the best naval college in the world. This 
was his only asset — his education — and as 
in his own country it was impossible to dis- 
pose of it, for possible purchasers he looked 
abroad. 

At that time the Tong King war was on be- 
tween France and China, and he decided, be- 
fore it grew rusty, to offer his knowledge to 
the followers of the Yellow Dragon. In those 
days that was a hazard of new fortunes that 
meant much more than it does now. To-day 
the East is as near as San Francisco ; the Jap- 
anese-Russian War, our occupation of the 
Philippines, the part played by our troops in 
the Boxer trouble, have made the affairs of 
China part of the daily reading of every one. 
Now, one can step into a brass bed at Forty- 
second Street and in four days at the Coast 

128 







_j 



Captain McGiffin on Graduation from the Naval 
Academy at twenty-three. 



CAPTAIN PHILO N. McGIFFIN 

get into another brass bed, and in twelve more 
be spinning down the Bund of Yokohama in a 
rickshaw. People go to Japan for the winter 
months as they used to go to Cairo. 

But in 1885 it was no such light undertak- 
ing, certainly not for a young man who had 
been brought up in the quiet atmosphere of 
an inland town, where generations of his fam- 
ily and other families had lived and intermar- 
ried, content with their surroundings. 

With very few of his thousand dollars left 
him, McGiffin arrived in February, 1885, in 
San Francisco. From there his letters to his 
family give one the picture of a healthy, warm- 
hearted youth, chiefly anxious lest his mother 
and sister should "worry/' In our country 
nearly every family knows that domestic trag- 
edy when the son and heir " breaks home ties/' 
and starts out to earn a living; and if all the 
world loves a lover, it at least sympathizes with 
the boy who is " looking for a job." The boy 
who is looking for the job may not think so, but 
each of those who has passed through the 
same hard place gives him, if nothing else, his 
good wishes. McGiffin's letters at this period 

gain for him from those who have had the 

129 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

privilege to read them the warmest good 
feeling. 

They are filled with the same cheery opti- 
mism, the same slurring over of his troubles, 
the same homely jokes, the same assurances 
that he is feeling " bully," and that it all will 
come out right, that every boy, when he starts 
out in the world, sends back to his mother. 

" I am in first-rate health and spirits, so I 
don't want you to fuss about me. I am big 
enough and ugly enough to scratch along 
somehow, and I will not starve." 

To his mother he proudly sends his name 
written in Chinese characters, as he had been 
taught to write it by the Chinese Consul- 
General in San Francisco, and a pen-picture 
of two elephants. " I am going to bring you 
home two of these," he writes, not knowing 
that in the strange and wonderful country to 
which he is going elephants are as infrequent 
as they are in Pittsburg. 

He reached China in April, and from Naga- 
saki on his way to Shanghai the steamer that 
carried him was chased by two French gun- 
boats. But, apparently much to his disap- 
pointment, she soon ran out of range of their 

130 



CAPTAIN PHILO N. McGIFFIN 

guns. Though he did not know it then, with 
the enemy he had travelled so far to fight this 
was his first and last hostile meeting; for 
already peace was in the air. 

Of that and of how, in spite of peace, he 
obtained the " job " he wanted, he must tell 
you himself in a letter home: 

"Tien-Tsin, China, April 13, 1885. 

"My dear Mother — I have not felt much in the 
humor for writing, for I did not know what was 
going to happen. I spent a good deal of money com- 
ing out, and when I got here, I knew, unless some- 
thing turned up, I was a gone coon. We got off Taku 
forts Sunday evening and the next morning we went 
inside; the channel is very narrow and sown with 
torpedoes. We struck one — an electric one — in com- 
ing up, but it didn't go off. We were until 10.30 p.m. 
in coming up to Tien-Tsin — thirty miles in a straight 
line, but nearly seventy by the river, which is only 
about one hundred feet wide — and we grounded ten 
times. 

" Well — at last we moored and went ashore. Brace 
Girdle, an engineer, and I went to the hotel, and the 
first thing we heard was — that peace was declared ! 
I went back on board ship, and I didn't sleep much— 
I never was so blue in my life. I knew if they didn't 
want me that I might as well give up the ghost, for I 
could never get away from China. Well — I worried 
around all night without sleep, and in the morning I 
felt as if I had been drawn through a knot-hole. I 

!3i 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

must have lost ten pounds. I went around about 10 
a.m. and gave my letters to Pethick, an American U. S. 
Vice-Consul and interpreter to Li Hung Chang. He 
said he would fix them for me. Then I went back to 
the ship, and as our captain was going up to see 
Li Hung Chang, I went along out of desperation. We 
got in, and after a while were taken in through cor- 
ridor after corfidor of the Viceroy's palace until we 
got in to the great Li, when we sat down and had 
tea and tobacco and talked through an interpreter. 
When it came my turn he asked : ' Why did you come 
to China ? ' I said : ' To enter the Chinese service for 
the war.' ' How do you expect to enter ? ' 'I expect 
you to give me a commission ! ' ' I have no place to 
offer you.' ' I think you have — I have come all the 
way from America to get it.' * What would you like? ' 
' I would like to get the new torpedo-boat and go 
down the Yang-tse-Kiang to the blockading squad- 
ron.' ' Will you do that? ' ' Of course.' 

" He thought a little and said : ' I will see what can 
be done. Will you take $100 a month for a start?' 
I said: ' That depends.' (Of course I would take it.) 
Well, after parley, he said he would put me on the 
flagship, and if I did well he would promote me. Then 
he looked at me and said : ' How old are you ? ' When 
I told him I was twenty-four I thought he would faint 
— for in China a man is a boy until he is over thirty. 
He said I would never do — I was a child. I could 
not know anything at all. I could not convince him, 
but at last he compromised — I was to pass an exami- 
nation at the Arsenal at the Naval College, in all 
branches, and if they passed me I would have a show. 
So we parted. I reported for examination next day, 

132 



CAPTAIN PHILO N. McGIFFIN 

but was put off — same the next day. But to-day I 
was told to come, and sat down to a stock of foolscap, 
and had a pretty stiff exam. I am only just through. 
I had seamanship, gunnery, navigation, nautical as- 
tronomy, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, conic sec- 
tions, curve tracing, differential and integral calculus. 
I had only three questions out of five to answer in 
each branch, but in the first three I answered all five. 
After that I only had time for three, but at the end he 
said I need not finish, he was perfectly satisfied. I 
had done remarkably well, and he would report to the 
Viceroy to-morrow. He examined my first papers — 
seamanship — said I was perfect in it, so I will get 
along, you need not fear. I told the Consul — he was 
very well pleased — he is a nice man. 

" I feel pretty well now — have had dinner and am 
smoking a good Manila cheroot. I wrote hard all 
day, wrote fifteen sheets of foolscap and made about 
a dozen drawings — got pretty tired. 

" I have had a hard scramble for the service and 
only got in by the skin of my teeth. I guess I will go 
to bed — I will sleep well to-night — Thursday. 

" I did not hear from the Naval Secretary, Tuesday, 
so yesterday morning I went up to the Admiralty and 
sent in my card. He came out and received me very 
well — said I had passed a ' very splendid examina- 
tion ' ; had been recommended very strongly to the 
Viceroy, who was very much pleased ; that the Direc- 
tor of the Naval College over at the Arsenal had 
wanted me and would I go over at once? I would. 
It was about five miles. We (a friend, who is a great 
rider here) went on steeplechase ponies — we were fer- 
ried across the Pei Ho in a small scow and then had 

*33 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

a long ride. There is a path — but Pritchard insisted 
on taking all the ditches, and as my pony jumped like 
a cat, it wasn't nice at first, but I didn't squeal and 
kept my seat and got the swing of it at last and rather 
liked it. I think I will keep a horse here — you can 
hire one and a servant together for $7 a month ; that 
is $5.60 of our money, and pony and man found in 
everything. 

" Well — at last we got to the Arsenal — a place 
about four miles around, fortified, where all sorts of 
arms — cartridges, shot and shell, engines, and every- 
thing — are made. The Naval College is inside, sur- 
rounded by a moat and wall. I thought to myself, if 
the cadet here is like to the thing I used to be at the 
U. S. N. A. that won't keep him in. I went through 
a lot of yards till I was ushered into a room finished 
in black ebony and was greeted very warmly by the 
Director. We took seats on a raised platform — 
Chinese style — and pretty soon an interpreter came, 
one of the Chinese professors, who was educated 
abroad, and we talked and drank tea. He said I had 
done well, that he had the authority of the Viceroy to 
take me there as ' Professor ' of seamanship and gun- 
nery; in addition I might be required to teach navi- 
gation or nautical astronomy, or drill the cadets in 
infantry, artillery, and fencing. For this I was to 
receive what would be in our money $1,800 per annum, 
as near as we can compare it, paid in gold each month. 
Besides, I will have a house furnished for my use, and 
it is their intention, as soon as I show that I k)iozi' 
something, to considerably increase my pay. They 
asked the Viceroy to give me 130 T per month (about 
$186) and house, but the Viceroy said I was but a 

134 



CAPTAIN PHILO N. McGIFFIN 

boy ; that I had seen no years and had only come here 
a week ago with no one to vouch for me, and that I 
might turn out an impostor. But he would risk ioo T 
on me anyhow, and as soon as I was reported favor- 
ably on by the college I would be raised — the agree- 
ment is to be for three years. For a few months I am 
to command a training ship — an ironclad that is in dry 
dock at present, until a captain in the English Navy 
comes out, who has been sent for to command her. 

" So Here I Am — twenty- four years old and cap- 
tain of a man-of-war — a better one than any in our 
own navy — only for a short time, of course, but I 
would be a pretty long time before I would command 
one at home. Well — I accepted and will enter on my 
duties in a week, as soon as my house is put in order. 
I saw it — it has a long veranda, very broad ; with flower 
garden, apricot trees, etc., just covered with blossoms ; 
a wide hall on the front, a room about 18 X 15, with 
a 13-foot ceiling; then back another rather larger, 
with a cupola skylight in the centre, where I am going 
to put a shelf with flowers. The Government is to 
furnish the house with bed, tables, chairs, sideboards, 
lounges, stove for kitchen. I have grates (Ameri- 
can) in the room, but I don't need them. We have 
snow and a good deal of ice in winter, but the ther- 
mometer never gets below zero. I have to supply my 
own crockery. I will have two servants and cook; 
I will only get one and the cook first — they only cost 
$4 to $5.50 per month, and their board amounts to 
very little. I can get along, don't you think so ? Now 
I want you to get Jim to pack up all my professional 
works on gunnery, surveying, seamanship, mathe- 
matics, astronomy, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, 

i35 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

conic sections, calculus, mechanics, and every book of 
that description I own, including those paper-bound 
' Naval Institute ' papers, and put them in a box, to- 
gether with any photos, etc., you think I would like — 
I have none of you or Pa or the family (including 
Carrie) — and send to me. 

"I just got in in time — didn't I? Another week 
would have been too late. My funds were getting 
low ; I would not have had anything before long. The 
U. S. Consul, General Bromley, is much pleased. The 
interpreter says it was all in the way I did with the 
Viceroy in the interview. 

" I will have a chance to go to Peking and later to 
a tiger hunt in Mongolia, but for the present I am 
going to study, work, and stroke these mandarins till 
I get a raise. I am the only instructor in both seaman- 
ship and gunnery, and I must know everything, both 
practically and theoretically. But it will be good for 
me — and the only thing is, that if I were put back 
into the Navy I would be in a dilemma. I think I 
will get my ' influence ' to work, and I want you peo- 
ple at home to look out, and in case I am — if it were 
represented to the Sec. that my position here was giv- 
ing me an immense lot of practical knowledge pro- 
fessionally — more than I could get on a ship at sea — 
I think he would give me two years' leave on half or 
quarter pay. Or, I would be willing to do without 
pay — only to be kept on the register in my rank. 

" I will write more about this. Love to all." 

It is characteristic of McGiffin that in the 
very same letter in which he announces he 

136 



CAPTAIN PHILO N. McGIFFIN 

has entered foreign service he plans to return 
to that of his own country. This hope never 
left him. You find the same homesickness for 
the quarterdeck of an American man-of-war 
all through his later letters. At one time a 
bill to reinstate the midshipmen who had been 
cheated of their commissions was introduced 
into Congress. Of this McGiffin writes fre- 
quently as " our bill." " It may pass," he 
writes, " but I am tired hoping. I have hoped 
so long. And if it should," he adds anxious- 
ly, " there may be a time limit set in which 
a man must rejoin, or lose his chance, so do 
not fail to let me know as quickly as you can." 
But the bill did not pass, and McGiffin never 
returned to the navy that had cut him adrift. 
He settled down at Tien-Tsin and taught the 
young cadets how to shoot. Almost all of 
those who in the Chinese-Japanese War served 
as officers were his pupils. As the navy grew, 
he grew with it, and his position increased 
in importance. More Mexican dollars per 
month, more servants, larger houses, and but- 
tons of various honorable colors were given 
him, and, in return, he established for China 
a modern naval college patterned after our 

137 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

own. In those days throughout China and 
Japan you could find many of these foreign 
advisers. Now, in Japan, the Hon. W. H. 
Dennison of the Foreign Office, one of our 
own people, is the only foreigner with whom 
the Japanese have not parted, and in China 
there are none. Of all of those who have gone 
none served his employers more faithfully 
than did McGiffin. At a time when every 
official robbed the people and the Government, 
and when " squeeze " or " graft " was recog- 
nized as a perquisite, McGiffin's hands were 
clean. The shells purchased for the Govern- 
ment by him were not loaded with black sand, 
nor were the rifles fitted with barrels of iron 
pipe. Once a year he celebrated the Thanks- 
giving Day of his own country by inviting to 
a great dinner all the Chinese naval officers 
who had been at least in part educated in 
America. It was a great occasion, and to 
enjoy it officers used to come from as far as 
Port Arthur, Shanghai, and Hongkong. So 
fully did some of them appreciate the efforts 
of their host that previous to his annual din- 
ner, for twenty-four hours, they delicately 
starved themselves. 

138 



CAPTAIN PHILO N. McGIFFIN 

During ten years McGiffin served as naval 
constructor and professor of gunnery and 
seamanship, and on board ships at sea gave 
practical demonstrations in the handling of 
the new cruisers. In 1894 he applied for leave, 
which was granted, but before he had sailed 
for home war with Japan was declared and 
he withdrew his application. He was placed 
as second in command on board the Chen 
Yuen, a seven-thousand-ton battleship, a sister 
ship to the Ting Yuen, the flagship of Admiral 
Ting Ju Chang. On the memorable 17th of 
September, 1894, the battle of the Yalu was 
fought, and so badly were the Chinese vessels 
hammered that the Chinese navy, for the time 
being, was wiped out of existence. 

From the start the advantage was with the 
Japanese fleet. In heavy guns the Chinese 
were the better armed, but in quick-firing guns 
the Japanese were vastly superior, and while 
the Chinese battleships Ting Yuen and Chen 
Yuen, each of 7,430 tons, were superior to any 
of the Japanese warships, the three largest of 
which were each of 4,277 tons, the gross ton- 
nage of the Japanese fleet was 36,000 to 21,000 
of the Chinese. During the progress of the 

139 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

battle the ships engaged on each side num- 
bered an even dozen, but at the very start, 
before a decisive shot was fired by either con- 
testant, the Tsi Yuen, 2,355 tons, and Kwan 
Chiae, 1,300 tons, ran away, and before they 
had time to get into the game the Chao Yung 
and Yang Wei were in flames and had fled to 
the nearest land. So the battle was fought 
by eight Chinese ships against twelve of the 
Japanese. Of the Chinese vessels, the flagship 
commanded by Admiral Ting and her sister 
ship, which immediately after the beginning 
of the fight was for four hours commanded by 
McGiffin, were the two chief aggressors, and 
in consequence received the fire of the entire 
Japanese squadron. Toward the end of the 
fight, which without interruption lasted for 
five long hours, the Japanese did not even 
consider the four smaller ships of the enemy, 
but, sailing around the two ironclads in a cir- 
cle, fired only at them. The Japanese them- 
selves testified that these two ships never lost 
their formation, and that when her sister 
ironclad was closely pressed the Chen Yuen, 
by her movements and gun practice, protected 

the Ting Yuen, and, in fact, while she could 

140 




McGiffin as Superintendent of the Chinese Naval College, 
at the age of thirtv-two. 



CAPTAIN PHILO N. McGIFFIN 

not prevent the heavy loss the fleet encoun- 
tered, preserved it from annihilation. During 
the fight this ship was almost continuously on 
fire, and was struck by every kind of projec- 
tile, from the thirteen-inch Canet shells to a 
rifle bullet, four hundred times. McGiffin 
himself was so badly wounded, so beaten 
about by concussions, so burned, and so bruised 
by steel splinters, that his health and eyesight 
were forever wrecked. But he brought the 
Chen Yuen safely into Port Arthur and the 
remnants of the fleet with her. 

On account of his lack of health he resigned 
from the Chinese service and returned to 
America. For two years he lived in New 
York City, suffering in body without cessa- 
tion the most exquisite torture. During that 
time his letters to his family show only tre- 
mendous courage. On the splintered, gaping 
deck of the Chen Yuen, with the fires below 
it, and the shells bursting upon it, he had 
shown to his Chinese crew the courage of the 
white man who knew he was responsible for 
them and for the honor of their country. But 
far greater and more difficult was the cour- 
age he showed while alone in the dark sick- 

141 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

room, "and in the private wards of the hos- 
pitals. 

In the letters he dictates from there he still 
is concerned only lest those at home shall 
" worry " ; he reassures them with falsehoods, 
jokes at their fears; of the people he can see 
from the window of the hospital tells them 
foolish stories; for a little boy who has been 
kind he asks them to send him his Chinese 
postage stamps; he plans a trip he will take 
with them when he is stronger, knowing he 
never will be stronger. The doctors had 
urged upon him a certain operation, and of it 
to a friend he wrote : " I know that I will have 
to have a piece about three inches square cut 
out of my skull, and this nerve cut off near the 
middle of the brain, as well as my eye taken 
out (for a couple of hours only, provided it is 

not mislaid, and can be found). Doctor 

and his crowd show a bad memory for fail- 
ures. As a result of this operation others 
have told me — I forget the percentage of 
deaths, which does not matter, but — that a 
large percentage have become insane. And 
some lost their sight." 

While threatened with insanity and com- 
142 




Commander McGiffin in Hospital After the Battle 
of the Yalu. 



Showing damage to clothes due to concussion. 



CAPTAIN PHILO N. McGIFFIN 

plete blindness, and hourly from his wounds 
suffering a pain drugs could not master, he 
dictated for the Century Magazine the only- 
complete account of the battle of the Yalu. 
In a letter to Mr. Richard Watson Gilder he 
writes : " . . . my eyes are troubling me. I 
cannot see even what I am writing now, and 
am getting the article under difficulties. I yet 
hope to place it in your hands by the 21st, 
still, if my eyes grow worse " 



" Still, if my eyes grow worse- 



The unfinished sentence was grimly pro- 
phetic. 

Unknown to his attendants at the hospital, 
among the papers in his despatch-box he had 
secreted his service revolver. On the morn- 
ing of the nth of February, 1897, he asked 
for this box, and on some pretext sent the 
nurse from the room. When the report of the 
pistol brought them running to his bedside, 
they found the pain-driven body at peace, and 
the tired eyes dark forever. 

In the article in the Century on the battle 
of the Yalu, he had said: 

" Chief among those who have died for their 
country is Admiral Ting Ju Chang, a gallant 

143 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

soldier and true gentleman. Betrayed by his 
countrymen, fighting against odds, almost his 
last official act was to stipulate for the lives of 
his officers and men. His own he scorned to 
save, well knowing that his ungrateful coun- 
try would prove less merciful than his honor- 
able foe. Bitter, indeed, must have been the 
reflections of the old, wounded hero, in that 
midnight hour, as he drank the poisoned cup 
that was to give him rest." 

And bitter indeed must have been the re- 
flections of the young wounded American, 
robbed, by the parsimony of his country, of 
the right he had earned to serve it, and who 
was driven out to give his best years and his 
life for a strange people under a strange flag. 



144 



V 



WILLIAM WALKER, THE KING OF THE 
FILIBUSTERS 

IT is safe to say that to members of the 
younger generation the name of William 
Walker conveys absolutely nothing. To 
them, as a name, " William Walker " awak- 
ens no pride of race or country. It certainly 
does not suggest poetry and adventure. To 
obtain a place in even this group of Soldiers 
of Fortune, William Walker, the most dis- 
tinguished of all American Soldiers of For- 
tune, the one who but for his own country- 
men would have single-handed attained the 
most far-reaching results, had to wait his 
turn behind adventurers of other lands and 
boy officers of his own. And yet had this 
man with the plain name, the name that to- 
day means nothing, accomplished what he 
adventured, he would on this continent have 
solved the problem of slavery, have estab- 
lished an empire in Mexico and in Central 

*45 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

America, and, incidentally, have brought us 
into war with all of Europe. That is all he 
would have accomplished. 

In the days of gold in San Francisco among 
the " Forty-niners " William Walker was one 
of the most famous, most picturesque and pop- 
ular figures. Jack Oakhurst, gambler; Colo- 
nel Starbottle, duellist; Yuba Bill, stage-coach 
driver, were his contemporaries. Bret Harte 
was one of his keenest admirers, and in two 
of his stories, thinly disguised under a more 
appealing name, Walker is the hero. When, 
later, Walker came to New York City, in his 
honor Broadway from the Battery to Madison 
Square was bedecked with flags and arches. 
" It was roses, roses all the way." The house- 
tops rocked and swayed. 

In New Orleans, where in a box at the opera 
he made his first appearance, for ten minutes 
the performance came to a pause, while the 
audience stood to salute him. 

This happened less than fifty years ago, and 

there are men who as boys were out with 

" Walker of Nicaragua," and who are still 

active in the public life of San Francisco and 

New York. 

146 




General William Walker. 



WILLIAM WALKER 

Walker was born in 1824, in Nashville, 
Tenn. He was the oldest son of a Scotch 
banker, a man of a deeply religious mind, and 
interested in a business which certainly is 
removed, as far as possible, from the profes- 
sion of arms. Indeed, few men better than 
William Walker illustrate the fact that great 
generals are born, not trained. Everything 
in Walker's birth, family tradition, and educa- 
tion pointed to his becoming a member of one 
of the " learned " professions. It was the 
wish of his father that he should be a min- 
ister of the Presbyterian Church, and as a 
child he was trained with that end in view. 
He himself preferred to study medicine, and 
after graduating at the University of Ten- 
nessee, at Edinburgh he followed a course 
of lectures, and for two years travelled in 
Europe, visiting many of the great hos- 
pitals. 

Then having thoroughly equipped himself 
to practise as a physician, after a brief return 
to his native city, and as short a stay in Phila- 
delphia, he took down his shingle forever, and 
proceeded to New Orleans to study law. In 
two years he was admitted to the bar of Lou- 

147 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

isiana. But because clients were few, or be- 
cause the red tape of the law chafed his spirit, 
within a year, as already he had abandoned 
the Church and Medicine, he abandoned his 
law practice and became an editorial writer 
on the New Orleans Crescent. A year later 
the restlessness which had rebelled against the 
grave professions led him to the gold fields 
of California, and San Francisco. There, in 
1852, at the age of only twenty-eight, as editor 
of the San Francisco Herald, Walker began 
his real life which so soon was to end in both 
disaster and glory. 

Up to his twenty-eighth year, except in his 
restlessness, nothing in his life foreshadowed 
what was to follow. Nothing pointed to him 
as a man for whom thousands of other men, 
from every capital of the world, would give 
up their lives. 

Negatively, by abandoning three separate 
callings, and in making it plain that a profes- 
sional career did not appeal to him, Walker 
had thrown a certain sidelight on his charac- 
ter; but actively he never had given any hint 
that under the thoughtful brow of the young 

doctor and lawyer there was a mind evolving 

148 



WILLIAM WALKER 

schemes of empire, and an ambition limited 
only by the two great oceans. 

Walker's first adventure was undoubtedly 
inspired by and in imitation of one which at 
the time of his arrival in San Francisco had 
just been brought to a disastrous end. This 
was the De Boulbon expedition into Mexico. 
The Count Gaston Raoulx de Raousset-Boul- 
bon was a young French nobleman and Sol- 
dier of Fortune, a chasseur d'Afrique, a 
duellist, journalist, dreamer, who came to Cali- 
fornia to dig gold. Baron Harden-Hickey, 
who was born in San Francisco a few years 
after Boulbon at the age of thirty was shot in 
Mexico, also was inspired to dreams of con- 
quest by this same gentleman adventurer. 

Boulbon was a young man of large ideas. 
In the rapid growth of California he saw a 
threat to Mexico and proposed to that govern- 
ment, as a " buffer " state between the two re- 
publics, to form a French colony in the Mex- 
ican state of Sonora. Sonora is that part of 
Mexico which directly joins on the south with 
our State of Arizona. The President of Mex- 
ico gave Boulbon permission to attempt this, 

and in 1852 he landed at Guaymas in the Gulf 

149 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

of California with two hundred and sixty well- 
armed Frenchmen. The ostensible excuse of 
Boulbon for thus invading foreign soil was 
his contract with the President under which 
his " emigrants " were hired to protect other 
foreigners working in the " Restauradora " 
mines from the attacks of Apache Indians 
from our own Arizona. But there is evidence 
that back of Boulbon was the French Govern- 
ment, and that he was attempting, in his small 
way, what later was attempted by Maximilian, 
backed by a French army corps and Louis 
Napoleon, to establish in Mexico an empire 
under French protection. For both the fili- 
buster and the emperor the end was the same ; 
to be shot by the fusillade against a church 
wall. 

In 1852, two years before Boulbon's death, 
which was the finale to his second filibustering 
expedition into Sonora, he wrote to a friend 
in Paris : " Europeans are disturbed by the 
growth of the United States. And rightly so. 
Unless she be dismembered; unless a power- 
ful rival be built up beside her (i. e., France 
in Mexico), America will become, through 
her commerce, her trade, her population, her 

150 



WILLIAM WALKER 

geographical position upon two oceans, the 
inevitable mistress of the world. In ten years 
Europe dare not fire a shot without her per- 
mission. As I write fifty Americans prepare 
to sail for Mexico and go perhaps to victory. 
Voila les Etats-Unis." 

These fifty Americans who, in the eyes of 
Boulbon, threatened the peace of Europe, were 
led by the ex-doctor, ex-lawyer, ex-editor 
William Walker, aged twenty-eight years. 
Walker had attempted but had failed to obtain 
from the Mexican Government such a con- 
tract as the one it had granted De Boulbon. 
He accordingly sailed without it, announcing 
that, whether the Mexican Government asked 
him to do so or not, he would see that the 
women and children on the border of Mexico 
and Arizona were protected from massacre by 
the Indians. It will be remembered that when 
Dr. Jameson raided the Transvaal he also 
went to protect " women and children " from 
massacre by the Boers. Walker's explanation 
of his expedition, in his own words, is as fol- 
lows. He writes in the third person : " What 
Walker saw and heard satisfied him that a 
comparatively small body of Americans might 

151 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

gain a position on the Sonora frontier and pro- 
tect the families on the border from the Indi- 
ans, and such an act would be one of human- 
ity whether or not sanctioned by the Mexican 
Government. The condition of the upper part 
of Sonora was at that time, and still is [he was 
writing eight years later, in i860], a disgrace 
to the civilization of the continent . . . and 
the people of the United States were more 
immediately responsible before the world for 
the Apache outrages. Northern Sonora was, 
in fact, more under the dominion of the 
Apaches than under the laws of Mexico, and 
the contributions of the Indians were collected 
with greater regularity and certainty than the 
dues of the tax-gatherers. The state of this 
region furnished the best defence for any 
American aiming to settle there without the 
formal consent of Mexico; and, although po- 
litical changes would certainly have followed 
the establishment of a colony, they might be 
justified by the plea that any social organiza- 
tion, no matter how secured, is preferable to 
that in which individuals and families are alto- 
gether at the mercy of savages. " 

While at the time of Jameson's raid the 
152 



WILLIAM WALKER 

women and children in danger of massacre 
from the Boers were as many as there are 
snakes in Ireland, at the time of Walker's raid 
the women and children were in danger from 
the Indians, who as enemies, as Walker soon 
discovered, were as cruel and as greatly to be 
feared as he had described them. 

But it was not to save women and children 
that Walker sought to conquer the State of 
Sonora. At the time of his expedition the 
great question of slavery was acute; and if 
in the States next to be admitted to the Union 
slavery was to be prohibited, the time had 
come, so it seemed to this statesman of twenty- 
eight years, when the South must extend her 
boundaries, and for her slaves find an outlet 
in fresh territory. Sonora already joined Ari- 
zona. By conquest her territory could easily 
be extended to meet Texas. As a matter of 
fact, strategically the spot selected by William 
Walker for the purpose for which he desired 
it was almost perfect. Throughout his brief 
career one must remember that the spring of 
all his acts was this dream of an empire where 
slavery would be recognized. His mother was 
a slave-holder. In Tennessee he had been born 

153 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

and bred surrounded by slaves. His youth and 
manhood had been spent in Nashville and New 
Orleans. He believed as honestly, as fanat- 
ically in the right to hold slaves as did his 
father in the faith of the Covenanters. To-day 
one reads his arguments in favor of slavery 
with the most curious interest. His appeals 
to the humanity of his reader, to his heart, to 
his sense of justice, to his fear of God, and to 
his belief in the Holy Bible not to abolish 
slavery, but to continue it, to this generation 
is as amusing as the topsy-turvyisms of Gil- 
bert or Shaw. But to the young man himself, 
slavery was a sacred institution, intended for 
the betterment of mankind, a God-given bene- 
fit to the black man and a God-given right of 
his white master. 

White brothers in the South, with perhaps 
less exalted motives, contributed funds to fit 
out Walker's expedition, and in October, 1852, 
with forty-five men, he landed at Cape St. 
Lucas, at the extreme point of Lower Cali- 
fornia. Lower California, it must be remem- 
bered, in spite of its name, is not a part of our 
California, but then was, and still is, a part of 
Mexico. The fact that he was at last upon 

154 



WILLIAM WALKER 

the soil of the enemy caused Walker to throw 
off all pretence; and instead of hastening to 
protect women and children, he sailed a few 
miles farther up the coast to La Paz. With 
his forty-five followers he raided the town, 
made the Governor a prisoner, and established 
a republic with himself as President. In a 
proclamation he declared the people free of 
the tyranny of Mexico. They had no desire 
to be free, but Walker was determined, and, 
whether they liked it or not, they woke up to 
find themselves an independent republic. A 
few weeks later, although he had not yet set 
foot there, Walker annexed on paper the State 
of Sonora, and to both States gave the name 
of the Republic of Sonora. 

As soon as word of this reached San Fran- 
cisco, his friends busied themselves in his be- 
half, and the danger-loving and adventurous 
of all lands were enlisted as " emigrants " and 
shipped to him in the bark Anita. 

Two months later, in November, 1852, three 
hundred of these joined Walker. They were 
as desperate a band of scoundrels as ever 
robbed a sluice, stoned a Chinaman, or shot a 
" Greaser." When they found that to com- 

155 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

mand them there was only a boy, they plotted 
to blow up the magazine in which the powder 
was stored, rob the camp, and march north, 
supporting themselves by looting the ranches. 
Walker learned of their plot, tried the ring- 
leaders by court-martial, and shot them. With 
a force as absolutely undisciplined as was his, 
the act required the most complete personal 
courage. That was a quality the men with 
him could fully appreciate. They saw they 
had as a leader one who could fight, and one 
who would punish. The majority did not want 
a leader who would punish; so when Walker 
called upon those who would follow him to 
Sonora to show their hands, only the original 
forty-five and about forty of the later recruits 
remained with him. With less than one hun- 
dred men he started to march up the Penin- 
sula through Lower California, and so around 
the Gulf to Sonora. 

From the very start the filibusters were 
overwhelmed with disaster. The Mexicans, 
with Indian allies, skulked on the flanks and 
rear. Men who in the almost daily encounters 
were killed fell into the hands of the Indians, 
and their bodies were mutilated. Stragglers 

156 



WILLIAM WALKER 

and deserters were run to earth and tortured. 
Those of the filibusters who were wounded 
died from lack of medical care. The only in- 
struments they possessed with which to extract 
the arrow-heads were probes made from ram- 
rods filed to a point. Their only food was the 
cattle they killed on the march. The army 
was barefoot, the Cabinet in rags, the Presi- 
dent of Sonora wore one boot and one shoe. 
Unable to proceed farther, Walker fell back 
upon San Vincente, where he had left the arms 
and ammunition of the deserters and a rear- 
guard of eighteen men. He found not one 
of these to welcome him. A dozen had de- 
serted, and the Mexicans had surprised the 
rest, lassoing them and torturing them until 
they died. Walker now had but thirty-five men. 
To wait for further reinforcements from San 
Francisco, even were he sure that reinforce- 
ments would come, was impossible. He deter- 
mined by forced marches to fight his way to 
the boundary line of California. Between him 
and safety were the Mexican soldiers holding 
the passes, and the Indians hiding on his 
flanks. When within three miles of the boun- 
dary line, at San Diego, Colonel Melendrez, 

157 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

who commanded the Mexican forces, sent in 
a flag of truce, and offered, if they would sur- 
render, a safe conduct to all of the survivors 
of the expedition except the chief. But the 
men who for one year had fought and starved 
for Walker, would not, within three miles of 
home, abandon him. 

Melendrez then begged the commander of 
the United States troops to order Walker to 
surrender. Major McKinstry, who was in 
command of the United States Army Post at 
San Diego, refused. For him to cross the line 
would be a violation of neutral territory. On 
Mexican soil he would neither embarrass the 
ex-President of Sonora nor aid him; but he 
saw to it that if the filibusters reached Ameri- 
can soil, no Mexican or Indian should follow 
them. 

Accordingly, on the imaginary boundary he 
drew up his troop, and like an impartial um- 
pire awaited the result. Hidden behind rocks 
and cactus, across the hot, glaring plain, the 
filibusters could see the American flag, and the 
gay, fluttering guidons of the cavalry. The 
sight gave them heart for one last desperate 
spurt. Melendrez also appreciated that for the 

158 



WILLIAM WALKER 

final attack the moment had come. As he 
charged, Walker, apparently routed, fled, but 
concealed in the rocks behind him he had sta- 
tioned a rear-guard of a dozen men. As 
Melendrez rode into this ambush the dozen 
riflemen emptied as many saddles, and the 
Mexicans and Indians stampeded. A half 
hour later, footsore and famished, the little 
band that had set forth to found an empire of 
slaves, staggered across the line and surren- 
dered to the forces of the United States. 

Of this expedition James Jeffrey Roche says, 
in his " Byways of War," which is of all books 
published about Walker the most intensely 
and fascinatingly interesting and complete: 
" Years afterward the peon herdsman or 
prowling Cocupa Indian in the mountain by- 
paths stumbled over the bleaching skeleton of 
some nameless one whose resting-place was 
marked by no cross or cairn, but the Colts 
revolver resting beside his bones spoke his 
country and his occupation — the only relic of 
the would-be Conquistadores of the Nineteenth 
Century." 

Under parole to report to General Wood, 
commanding the Department of the Pacific, 

159 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

the filibusters were sent by sailing vessel to 
San Francisco, where their leader was tried 
for violating the neutrality laws of the United 
States, and acquitted. 

Walker's first expedition had ended in fail- 
ure, but for him it had been an opportunity of 
tremendous experience, as active service is 
the best of all military academies, and for the 
kind of warfare he was to wage, the best prep- 
aration. Nor was it inglorious, for his fellow 
survivors, contrary to the usual practice, in- 
stead of in barrooms placing the blame for 
failure upon their leader, stood ready to fight 
one and all who doubted his ability or his cour- 
age. Later, after five years, many of these 
same men, though ten to twenty years his 
senior, followed him to death, and never 
questioned his judgment nor his right to 
command. 

At this time in Nicaragua there was the 
usual revolution. On the south the sister re- 
public of Costa Rica was taking sides, on the 
north Honduras was landing arms and men. 
There was no law, no government. A dozen 
political parties, a dozen commanding gener- 
als, and not one strong man. 

160 



WILLIAM WALKER 

In the editorial rooms of the San Francisco 
Herald, Walker, searching the map for new- 
worlds to conquer, rested his finger upon Nica- 
ragua. 

In its confusion of authority he saw an op- 
portunity to make himself a power, and in its 
tropical wealth and beauty, in the laziness and 
incompetence of its inhabitants, he beheld a 
greater, fairer, more kind Sonora. On the 
Pacific side from San Francisco he could re- 
enforce his army with men and arms; on the 
Caribbean side from New Orleans he could, 
when the moment arrived, people his empire 
with slaves. 

The two parties at war in Nicaragua were 
the Legitimists and the Democrats. Why they 
were at war it is not necessary to know. 
Probably Walker did not know ; it is not likely 
that they themselves knew. But from the 
leader of the Democrats Walker obtained a 
contract to bring to Nicaragua three hundred 
Americans, who were each to receive several 
hundred acres of land, and who were described 
as " colonists liable to military duty." This 
contract Walker submitted to the Attorney- 
General of the State and to General Wood, 

161 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

who once before had acquitted him of filibus- 
tering; and neither of these Federal officers 
saw anything which seemed to give them the 
right to interfere. But the rest of San Fran- 
cisco was less credulous, and the " colonists " 
who joined Walker had a very distinct idea 
that they were not going to Nicaragua to plant 
coffee or to pick bananas. 

In May, 1855, J ust a Y ear after Walker and 
his thirty-three followers had surrendered ta 
the United States troops at San Diego, with 
fifty new recruits and seven veterans of the for- 
mer expedition he sailed from San Francisco 
in the brig Vesta, and in five weeks, after a 
weary and stormy voyage, landed at Realejo. 
There he was met by representatives of the 
Provisional Director of the Democrats, who 
received the Californians warmly. 

Walker was commissioned a colonel, Achil- 
les Kewen, who had been fighting under 
Lopez in Cuba, a lieutenant-colonel, and Tim- 
othy Crocker, who had served under Walker 
in the Sonora expedition, a major. The corps 
was organized as an independent command 
and was named " La Falange Americana." 

At this time the enemy held the route to the 

162 



WILLIAM WALKER 

Caribbean, and Walker's first orders were to 
dislodge him. 

Accordingly, a week after landing with his 
fifty-seven Americans and one hundred and 
fifty native troops, Walker sailed in the Vesta 
for Brito, from which port he marched upon 
Rivas, a city of eleven thousand people and 
garrisoned by some twelve hundred of the 
enemy. 

The first fight ended in a complete and dis- 
astrous fiasco. The native troops ran away, 
and the Americans surrounded by six hundred 
of the Legitimists' soldiers, after defending 
themselves for three hours behind some adobe 
huts, charged the enemy and escaped into the 
jungle. Their loss was heavy, and among the 
killed were the two men upon whom Walker 
chiefly depended: Kewen and Crocker. The 
Legitimists placed the bodies of the dead and 
wounded who were still living on a pile of logs 
and burned them. After a painful night 
march, Walker, the next day, reached San 
Juan on the coast, and, finding a Costa Rican 
schooner in port, seized it for his use. At this 
moment, although Walker's men were de- 
feated, bleeding, and in open flight, two " grin- 

163 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

gos " picked up on the beach of San Juan, " the 
Texan Harry McLeod and the Irishman Peter 
Burns," asked to be permitted to join him. 

" It was encouraging," Walker writes, " for 
the soldiers to find that some besides them- 
selves did not regard their fortunes as alto- 
gether desperate, and small as was this addi- 
tion to their number it gave increased moral 
as well as material strength to the command/' 

Sometimes in reading history it would ap- 
pear as though for success the first requisite 
must be an utter lack of humor, and inability 
to look upon what one is attempting except 
with absolute seriousness. With forty men 
Walker was planning to conquer and rule 
Nicaragua, a country with a population of 
250,000 souls and as large as the combined 
area of Massachusetts, Vermont, Rhode Isl- 
and, New Hampshire, and Connecticut. And 
yet, even seven years later, he records without 
a smile that two beach-combers gave his army 
" moral and material strength." And it is 
most characteristic of the man that at the 
moment he was rejoicing over this addition to 
his forces, to maintain discipline two Amer- 
icans who had set fire to the houses of the 

164 



WILLIAM WALKER 

enemy he ordered to be shot. A weaker 
man would have repudiated the two Ameri- 
cans, who, in fact, were not members of the 
Phalanx, and trusted that their crimes would 
not be charged against him. But the success 
of Walker lay greatly in his stern discipline. 
He tried the men, and they confessed to their 
guilt. One got away ; and, as it might appear 
that Walker had connived at his escape, to the 
second man was shown no mercy. When one 
reads how severe was Walker in his punish- 
ments, and how frequently the death penalty 
was invoked by him against his own few fol- 
lowers, the wonder grows that these men, as 
independent and as unaccustomed to restraint 
as were those who first joined him, submitted 
to his leadership. One can explain it only by 
the personal quality of Walker himself. 

Among these reckless, fearless outlaws, 
who, despising their allies, believed and 
proved that with his rifle one American could 
account for a dozen Nicaraguans, Walker was 
the one man who did not boast or drink or 
gamble, who did not even swear, who never 
looked at a woman, and who, in money mat- 
ters, was scrupulously honest and unself-seek- 

165 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

ing. In a fight, his followers knew that for 
them he would risk being shot just as uncon- 
cernedly as to maintain his authority he would 
shoot one of them. 

Treachery, cowardice, looting, any indig- 
nity to women, he punished with death ; but to 
the wounded, either of his own or of the ene- 
my's forces, he was as gentle as a Nursing Sis- 
ter; and the brave and able he rewarded with 
instant promotion and higher pay. In no one 
trait was he a demagogue. One can find no 
effort on his part to ingratiate himself with his 
men. Among the officers of his staff there 
were no favorites. He messed alone, and at 
all times kept to himself. He spoke little, and 
then with utter lack of self-consciousness. In 
the face of injustice, perjury, or physical dan- 
ger, he was always calm, firm, dispassionate. 
But it is said that on those infrequent occasions 
when his anger asserted itself, the steady steel- 
gray eyes flashed so menacingly that those 
who faced them would as soon look down the 
barrel of his Colt. 

The impression one gets of him gathered 
from his recorded acts, from his own writings, 
from the writings of those who fought with 

166 



WILLIAM WALKER 

him is of a silent, student-like young man be- 
lieving religiously in his " star of destiny " ; 
but, in all matters that did not concern himself, 
possessed of a grim sense of fun. The sayings 
of his men that in his history of the war he re- 
cords, show a distinct appreciation of the Bret 
Harte school of humor. As, for instance, when 
he tells how he wished to make one of them 
a drummer boy and the Calif ornian drawled: 
" No, thanks, colonel, I never seen a pic- 
ture of a battle yet that the first thing in it 
wasn't a dead drummer boy with a busted 
drum." 

In Walker the personal vanity which is so 
characteristic of the soldier of fortune was 
utterly lacking. In a land where a captain 
bedecks himself like a field marshal, Walker 
wore his trousers stuffed in his boots, a civil- 
ian's blue frock-coat, and the slouch hat of the 
period, with, for his only ornament, the red 
ribbon of the Democrats. The authority he 
wielded did not depend upon braid or buttons, 
and only when going into battle did he wear 
his sword. In appearance he was slightly built, 
rather below the medium height, smooth 

shaven and with deep-set gray eyes. These 

167 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

eyes apparently, as they gave him his nick- 
name, were his most marked feature. 

His followers called him, and later, when 
he was thirty-two years old, he was known all 
over the United States as " the Gray- Eyed 
Man of Destiny." 

From the first Walker recognized that in 
order to establish himself in Nicaragua he 
must keep in touch with all possible recruits 
arriving from San Francisco and New York, 
and that to do this he must hold the line of 
transit from the Caribbean Sea to the Pacific. 
At this time the sea routes to the gold fields 
were three : by sailing vessel around the Cape, 
one over the Isthmus of Panama, and one, 
which was the shortest, across Nicaragua. By 
a charter from the Government of Nicaragua, 
the right to transport passengers across this 
isthmus was controlled by the Accessory Tran- 
sit Company of which the first Cornelius Van- 
derbilt was president. His company owned a 
line of ocean steamers both on the Pacific side 
and on the Atlantic side. Passengers en route 
from New York to the gold fields were landed 
by these latter steamers at Grey Town on the 
west coast of Nicaragua, and sent by boats of 

168 



WILLIAM WALKER 

light draught up the San Juan River to Lake 
Nicaragua. There they were met by larger 
lake steamers and conveyed across the lake to 
Virgin Bay. From that point in carriages and 
on mule back they were carried twelve miles 
overland to the port of San Juan del Sud on 
the Pacific Coast where they boarded the com- 
pany's steamers to San Francisco. 

During the year of Walker's occupation the 
number of passengers crossing Nicaragua was 
an average of about two thousand a month. 

It was to control this route that immediately 
after his first defeat Walker returned to San 
Juan del Sud, and in a smart skirmish de- 
feated the enemy and secured possession of 
Virgin Bay, the halting place for the passen- 
gers going east or west. In this fight Walker 
was outnumbered five to one, but his losses 
were only three natives killed and a few Amer- 
icans wounded. The Legitimists lost sixty 
killed and a hundred wounded. This propor- 
tion of losses shows how fatally effective was 
the rifle and revolver fire of the Californians. 
Indeed, so wonderful was it that when some 
years ago I visited the towns and cities cap- 
tured by the filibusters I found that the marks- 

169 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

manship of Walker's Phalanx was still a tra- 
dition. Indeed, thanks to the filibusters, to-day 
in any part of Central America a man from the 
States, if in trouble, has only to show his gun. 
No native will wait for him to fire it. 

After the fight at Virgin Bay, Walker re- 
ceived from California fifty recruits — a very 
welcome addition to his force, and as he now 
commanded about one hundred and twenty 
Americans, three hundred Nicaraguans, under 
a friendly native, General Valle, and two brass 
cannon, he decided to again attack Rivas. 
Rivas is on the lake just above Virgin Bay; 
still further up is Granada, which was the 
headquarters of the Legitimists. 

Fearing Walker's attack upon Rivas, the 
Legitimist troops were hurried south from 
Granada to that city, leaving Granada but 
slightly protected. Through intercepted let- 
ters Walker learned of this and determined to 
strike at Granada. By night, in one of the lake 
steamers, he skirted the shore, and just before 
daybreak with fires banked and all lights out, 
drew up to a point near the city. The day 
previous the Legitimists had gained a victory, 
and as good luck or Walker's " destiny " would 

i 7 o 



WILLIAM WALKER 

have it, the night before Granada had been 
celebrating the event. Much joyous dancing 
and much drinking of aguardiente had buried 
the inhabitants in a drugged slumber. The 
garrison slept, the sentries slept, the city slept. 
But when the convent bells called for early 
mass, the air was shaken with sharp reports 
that to the ears of the Legitimists were unfa- 
miliar and disquieting. They were not the 
loud explosions of their own muskets nor of 
the smooth bores of the Democrats. The 
sounds were sharp and cruel like the crack of 
a whip. The sentries flying from their posts 
disclosed the terrifying truth. " The Filibus- 
ters ! " they cried. Following them at a gal- 
lop came Walker and Valle and behind them 
the men of the awful Phalanx, whom already 
the natives had learned to fear; the bearded 
giants in red flannel shirts who at Rivas on 
foot had charged the artillery with revolvers, 
who at Virgin Bay when wounded had drawn 
from their boots glittering bowie knives and 
hurled them like arrows, who at all times shot 
with the accuracy of the hawk falling upon a 
squawking hen. 

There was a brief terrified stand in the 
171 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

Plaza, and then a complete rout. As was their 
custom, the native Democrats at once began 
to loot the city. But Walker put his sword 
into the first one of these he met, and ordered 
the Americans to arrest all others found steal- 
ing, and to return the goods already stolen. 
Over a hundred political prisoners in the Car- 
tel were released by Walker, and the ball and 
chain to which each was fastened stricken off. 
More than two-thirds of them at once enlisted 
under Walker's banner. 

He now was in a position to dictate to the 
enemy his own terms of peace, but a fatal 
blunder on the part of Parker H. French, a 
lieutenant of Walker's, postponed peace for 
several weeks, and led to unfortunate reprisals. 
French had made an unauthorized and unsuc- 
cessful assault on San Carlos at the eastern 
end of the lake, and the Legitimists retaliated 
at Virgin Bay by killing half a dozen peaceful 
passengers, and at San Carlos by firing at a 
transit steamer. For this the excuse of the 
Legitimists was, that now that Walker was 
using the lake steamers as transports, it was 
impossible for them to know whether the boats 

were occupied by his men or neutral passen- 

172 



WILLIAM WALKER 

gers. As he could not reach the guilty ones, 
Walker held responsible for their acts their 
secretary of state, who at the taking of Gra- 
nada was among the prisoners. He was tried 
by court-martial and shot, " a victim of the 
new interpretation of the principles of constitu- 
tional government." While this act of Walk- 
er's was certainly stretching the theory of 
responsibility to the breaking point, its imme- 
diate effect was to bring about a hasty surren- 
der and a meeting between the generals of the 
two political parties. Thus, four months after 
Walker and his fifty-seven followers landed 
in Nicaragua, a suspension of hostilities was 
arranged, and the side for which the Ameri- 
cans had fought was in power. Walker was 
made commander-in-chief of an army of twelve 
hundred men with salary of six thousand dol- 
lars a year. A man named Rivas was ap- 
pointed temporary president. 

To Walker this pause in the fight was most 
welcome. It gave him an opportunity to enlist 
recruits and to organize his men for the better 
accomplishment of what was the real object 
of his going to Nicaragua. He now had under 
him a remarkable force, one of the most effec- 

173 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

tive known to military history. For although 
six months had not yet passed the organiza- 
tion he now commanded was as unlike the Pha- 
lanx of the fifty-eight adventurers who were 
driven back at Rivas, as were FalstafFs fol- 
lowers from the regiment of picked men com- 
manded by Colonel Roosevelt. Instead of the 
undisciplined and lawless now being in the ma- 
jority, the ranks were filled with the pick of the 
California mining camps, with veterans of the 
Mexican War, with young Southerners of 
birth and spirit, and with soldiers of fortune 
from all of the great armies of Europe. 

In the Civil War, which so soon followed, 
and later in the service of the Khedive of 
Egypt, were several of Walker's officers, and 
for years after his death there was no war in 
which one of the men trained by him in the 
jungles of Nicaragua did not distinguish him- 
self. In his memoirs, the Englishman, General 
Charles Frederic Henningsen, writes that 
though he had taken part in some of the great- 
est battles of the Civil War he would pit a thou- 
sand men of Walker's command against any 
five thousand Confederate or Union soldiers. 
And General Henningsen was one who spoke 

174 



WILLIAM WALKER 

with authority. Before he joined Walker he 
had served in Spain under Don Carlos, in 
Hungary under Kossuth, and in Bulgaria. 

Of Walker's men, a regiment of which he 
commanded, he writes : "I often have seen 
them march with a broken or compound frac- 
tured arm in splints, and using the other to 
fire the rifle or revolver. Those with a frac- 
tured thigh or wounds which rendered them 
incapable of removal, shot themselves. Such 
men do not turn up in the average of every- 
day life, nor do I ever expect to see their like 
again. All military science failed on a sud- 
denly given field before such assailants, who 
came at a run to close with their revolvers and 
who thought little of charging a gun battery, 
pistol in hand." 

Another graduate of Walker's army was 
Captain Fred Townsend Ward, a native of 
Salem, Mass., who after the death of Walker 
organized and led the Ever Victorious army 
that put down the Tai-Ping rebellion, and per- 
formed the many feats of martial glory for 
which Chinese Gordon received the credit. In 
Shanghai, to the memory of the filibuster, 
there are to-day two temples in his honor. 

i7S 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

Joaquin Miller, the poet, miner, and soldier, 
who but recently was a picturesque figure on 
the hotel porch at Saratoga Springs, was one 
of the young Californians who was " out with 
Walker," and who later in his career by his 
verse helped to preserve the name of his be- 
loved commander. I. C. Jamison, living to-day 
in Guthrie, Oklahoma, was a captain under 
Walker. When war again came, as it did 
within four months, these were the men who 
made Walker president of Nicaragua. 

During the four months in all but title he 
had been president, and as such he was recog- 
nized and feared. It was against him, not 
Rivas, that in February, 1856, the neighboring 
republic of Costa Rica declared war. For 
three months this war continued with varying 
fortunes until the Costa Ricans were driven 
across the border. 

In June of the same year Rivas called a gen- 
eral election for president, announcing himself 
as the candidate of the Democrats. Two other 
Democrats also presented themselves, Salazar 
and Ferrer. The Legitimists, recognizing in 
their former enemy the real ruler of the coun- 
try, nominated Walker. By an overwhelming 

176 



WILLIAM WALKER 

majority he was elected, receiving 15,835 votes 
to 867 cast for Rivas. Salazar received 2,087 >" 
Ferrer, 4,447. 

Walker now was the legal as well as the 
actual ruler of the country, and at no time in 
its history, as during Walker's administration, 
was Nicaragua governed so justly, so wisely, 
and so well. But in his success the neighbor- 
ing republics saw a menace to their own inde- 
pendence. To the four other republics of Cen- 
tral America the five-pointed blood-red star on 
the flag of the filibusters bore a sinister motto : 
" Five or None." The meaning was only too 
unpleasantly obvious. At once Costa Rica on 
the south, and Guatemala, Salvador, and Hon- 
duras from the north, with the malcontents of 
Nicaragua, declared war against the foreign 
invader. Again Walker was in the field with 
opposed to him 21,000 of the allies. The 
strength of his own force varied. On his elec- 
tion as president the backbone of his army was 
a magnificently trained body of veterans to the 
number of 2,000. This was later increased to 
3,500, but it is doubtful if at any one time it 
ever exceeded that number. His muster and 

hospital rolls show that during his entire occu- 

177 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

pation of Nicaragua there were enlisted, at one 
time or another, under his banner 10,000 men. 
While in his service, of this number, by hostile 
shots or fever, 5,000 died. 

To describe the battles with the allies would 
be interminable and wearying. In every par- 
ticular they are much alike, the long silent 
night march, the rush at daybreak, the fight 
to gain strategic positions either of the bar- 
racks, or of the Cathedral in the Plaza, the 
hand-to-hand fighting from behind barricades 
and adobe walls. The outcome of these fights 
sometimes varied, but the final result was never 
in doubt, and had no outside influences inter- 
vened, in time each republic in Central America 
would have come under the five-pointed star. 

In Costa Rica there is a marble statue, show- 
ing that republic represented as a young 
woman with her foot upon the neck of Walker. 
Some night a truth-loving American will place 
a can of dynamite at the foot of that statue, and 
walk hurriedly away. Unaided, neither Costa 
Rica, nor any other Central American repub- 
lic, could have driven Walker from her soil. 
His downfall came through his own people, and 

through an act of his which provoked them. 

178 



WILLIAM WALKER 

When Walker was elected president he 
found that the Accessory Transit Company 
had not lived up to the terms of its concession 
with the Nicaraguan Government. His efforts 
to hold it to the terms of its concession led to 
his overthrow. By its charter the Transit 
Company agreed to pay to Nicaragua $10,000 
annually and ten per cent of the net profits, but 
the company, whose history the United States 
Minister, Squire, characterized as " an infa- 
mous career of deception and fraud," manipu- 
lated its books in such a fashion as to show 
that there never were any profits. Doubting 
this, Walker sent a commission to New York 
to investigate. The commission discovered 
the fraud and demanded in back-payments 
$250,000. When the company refused to pay 
this, as security for the debt Walker seized its 
steamers, wharves, and storehouses, revoked 
its charter, and gave a new charter to two of 
its directors, Morgan and Garrison, who, in 
San Francisco, were working against Vander- 
bilt. In doing this, while he was legally in the 
right, he committed a fatal error. He had 
made a powerful enemy of Vanderbilt, and he 

had shut off his only lines of communication 

179 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

with the United States. For, enraged at the 
presumption of the filibuster president, Van- 
derbilt withdrew his ocean steamers, thus leav- 
ing Walker without men or ammunition, and 
as isolated as though upon a deserted island. 
He possessed Vanderbilt' s boats upon the San 
Juan River and Nicaragua Lake, but they 
were of use to him only locally. 

His position was that of a man holding the 
centre span of a bridge of which every span on 
either side of him has been destroyed. 

Vanderbilt did not rest at withdrawing 
his steamers, but by supporting the Costa 
Ricans with money and men, carried the war 
into Central America. From Washington he 
fought Walker through Secretary of State 
Marcy, who proved a willing tool. 

Spencer and Webster, and the other soldiers 
of fortune employed by Vanderbilt, closed the 
route on the Caribbean side, and the man-of- 
war St. Marys, commanded by Captain Davis, 
was ordered to San Juan on the Pacific side. 
The instructions given to Captain Davis were 
to aid the allies in forcing Walker out of Nica- 
ragua. Walker claims that these orders w r ere 
given to Marcy by Vanderbilt and by Marcy 

180 



WILLIAM WALKER 

to Commodore Mervin, who was Marcy's per- 
sonal friend and who issued them to Davis. 
Davis claims that he acted only in the interest 
of humanity to save Walker in spite of himself. 
In any event, the result was the same. Walker, 
his force cut down by hostile shot and fever 
and desertion, took refuge in Rivas, where he 
was besieged by the allied armies. There was 
no bread in the city. The men were living on 
horse and mule meat. There was no salt. 
The hospital was filled with wounded and those 
stricken with fever. 

Captain Davis, in the name of humanity, 
demanded Walker's surrender to the United 
States. Walker told him he would not sur- 
render, but that if the time came when he 
found he must fly, he would do so in his own 
little schooner of war, the Granada, which con- 
stituted his entire navy, and in her, as a free 
man, take his forces where he pleased. Then 
Davis informed Walker that the force Walker 
had sent to recapture the Greytown route had 
been defeated by the janizaries of Vanderbilt, 
that the steamers from San Francisco, on 
which Walker now counted to bring him rein- 
forcements, had also been taken off the line, 

181 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

and finally that it was his " unalterable and 
deliberate intention " to seize the Granada. 
On this point his orders left him no choice. 
The Granada was the last means of transpor- 
tation still left to Walker. He had hoped to 
make a sortie and on board her to escape from 
the country. But with his ship taken from 
him and no longer able to sustain the siege of 
the allies, he surrendered to the forces of the 
United States. In the agreement drawn up 
by him and Davis, Walker provided for the 
care, by Davis, of the sick and wounded, for 
the protection after his departure of the na- 
tives who had fought with him, and for the 
transportation of himself and officers to the 
United States. 

On his arrival in New York he received a 
welcome such as later was extended to Kos- 
suth, and, in our own day, to Admiral Dewey. 
The city was decorated with flags and arches ; 
and banquets, fetes, and public meetings were 
everywhere held in his honor. Walker re- 
ceived these demonstrations modestly, and on 
every public occasion announced his determi- 
nation to return to the country of which he 

was the president, and from which by force 

182 



WILLIAM WALKER 

he had been driven. At Washington, where 
he went to present his claims, he received scant 
encouragement. His protest against Captain 
Davis was referred to Congress, where it was 
allowed to die. 

Within a month Walker organized an ex- 
pedition with which to regain his rights in 
Nicaragua, and as, in his new constitution for 
that country, he had annulled the old law abol- 
ishing slavery, among the slave-holders of the 
South he found enough money and recruits to 
enable him to at once leave the United States. 
With one hundred and fifty men he sailed from 
New Orleans and landed at San del Norte on 
the Caribbean side. While he formed a camp 
on the harbor of San Juan, one of his officers, 
with fifty men, proceeded up the river, and 
capturing the town of Castillo Vie jo and four 
of the Transit steamers, was in a fair way to 
obtain possession of the entire route. At this 
moment upon the scene arrived the United 
States frigate Wabash and Hiram Paulding, 
who landed a force of three hundred and fifty 
blue-jackets with howitzers, and turned the 
guns of his frigate upon the camp of the Presi- 
dent of Nicaragua. Captain Engel, who pre- 

183 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

sented the terms of surrender to Walker, said 
to him : " General, I am sorry to see you here. 
A man like you is worthy to command better 
men." To which Walker replied grimly: " If 
I had a third the number you have brought 
against me, I would show you which of us two 
commands the better men." 

For the third time in his history Walker 
surrendered to the armed forces of his own 
country. 

On his arrival in the United States, in fulfil- 
ment of his parole to Paulding, Walker at once 
presented himself at Washington a prisoner 
of war. But President Buchanan, although 
Paulding had acted exactly as Davis had done, 
refused to support him, and in a message to 
Congress declared that that officer had com- 
mitted a grave error and established an unsafe 
precedent. 

On the strength of this Walker demanded 

of the United States Government indemnity 

for his losses, and that it should furnish him 

and his followers transportation even to the 

very camp from which its representatives had 

torn him. This demand, as Walker foresaw, 

was not considered seriously, and with a force 

184 



WILLIAM WALKER 

of about one hundred men, among whom were 
many of his veterans, he again set sail from 
New Orleans. Owing to the fact that to pre- 
vent his return, there now were on each side 
of the Isthmus both American and British 
men-of-war, Walker, with the idea of reach- 
ing Nicaragua by land, stopped off at Hon- 
duras. In his war with the allies the Hondu- 
ranians had been as savage in their attacks 
upon his men as even the Costa Ricans, and 
finding his old enemies now engaged in a local 
revolution, on landing, Walker declared for 
the weaker side and captured the important 
seaport of Trujillo. He no sooner had taken 
it than the British warship Icarus anchored in 
the harbor, and her commanding officer, Cap- 
tain Salmon, notified Walker that the British 
Government held a mortgage on the revenues 
of the port, and that to protect the interests of 
his Government he intended to take the town. 
Walker answered that he had made Trujillo 
a free port, and that Great Britain's claims no 
longer existed. 

The British officer replied that if Walker 
surrendered himself and his men he would 
carry them as prisoners to the United States, 

185 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

and that if he did not, he would bombard the 
town. At this moment General Alvarez, with 
seven hundred Honduranians, from the land 
side surrounded Trujillo, and prepared to at- 
tack. Against such odds by sea and land 
Walker was helpless, and he determined to fly. 
That night, with seventy men, he left the town 
and proceeded down the coast toward Nica- 
ragua. The Icarus, having taken on board 
Alvarez, started in pursuit. The President of 
Nicaragua was found in a little Indian fishing 
village, and Salmon sent in his shore-boats and 
demanded his surrender. On leaving Trujillo, 
Walker had been forced to abandon all his 
ammunition save thirty rounds a man, and all 
of his food supplies excepting two barrels of 
bread. On the coast of this continent there is 
no spot more unhealthy than Honduras, and 
when the Englishmen entered the fishing vil- 
lage they found Walker's seventy men lying 
in the palm huts helpless with fever, and with 
no stomach to fight British blue-jackets with 
whom they had no quarrel. Walker inquired 
of Salmon if he were asking him to surrender 
to the British or to the Honduranian forces, 
and twice Salmon assured him, " distinctly and 

186 



WILLIAM WALKER 

specifically/' that he was surrendering to the 
forces of her Majesty. With this understand- 
ing Walker and his men laid down their arms 
and were conveyed to the Icarus. But on 
arriving at Trujillo, in spite of their protests 
and demands for trial by a British tribunal, 
Salmon turned over his prisoners to the Hon- 
duranian general. What excuse for this is 
now given by his descendants in the Salmon 
family I do not know. Probably it is a subject 
they avoid, and, in history, Salmon's version 
has never been given, which for him, perhaps, 
is an injustice. But the fact remains that he 
turned over his white brothers to the mercies 
of half-Indian, half-negro, savages, who were 
not allies of Great Britain, and in whose quar- 
rels she had no interest. And Salmon did this, 
knowing there could be but one end. If he did 
not know it, his stupidity equalled what now 
appears to be heartless indifference. So far 
as to secure pardon for all except the leader 
and one faithful follower, Colonel Rudler of 
the famous Phalanx, Salmon did use his au- 
thority, and he offered, if Walker would ask 
as an American citizen, to intercede for him. 
But Walker, with a distinct sense of loyalty 

187 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

to the country he had conquered, and whose 
people had honored him with their votes, re- 
fused to accept life from the country of his 



UNITED STATES 




ROUTES OF WALKER'S THREE FILIBUSTERING EXPEDITIONS. 



birth, the country that had injured and re- 
pudiated him. 

Even in his extremity, abandoned and alone 
on a strip of glaring coral and noisome swamp 



iSS 



WILLIAM WALKER 

land, surrounded only by his enemies, he re- 
mained true to his ideal. 

At thirty-seven life is very sweet, many 
things still seem possible, and before him, 
could his life be spared, Walker beheld greater 
conquests, more power, a new South control- 
ling a Nicaragua canal, a network of busy rail- 
roads, great squadrons of merchant vessels, 
himself emperor of Central America. On the 
gunboat the gold-braided youth had but to 
raise his hand, and Walker again would be a 
free man. But the gold-braided one would 
render this service only on the condition that 
Walker would appeal to him as an American; 
it was not enough that Walker was a human 
being. The condition Walker could not grant. 

" The President of Nicaragua," he said, " is 
a citizen of Nicaragua." 

They led him out at sunrise to a level piece 

of sand along the beach, and as the priest held 

the crucifix in front of him he spoke to his 

executioners in Spanish, simply and gravely: 

"I die a Roman Catholic. In making war 

upon you at the invitation of the people of 

Ruatan I was wrong. Of your people I ask 

pardon. I accept my punishment with resig- 

189 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

nation. I would like to think my death will 
be for the good of society." 

From a distance of twenty feet three sol- 
diers fired at him, but, although each shot took 
effect, Walker was not dead. So, a sergeant 
stooped, and with a pistol killed the man who 
would have made him one of an empire of 
slaves. 

Had Walker lived four years longer to ex- 
hibit upon the great board of the Civil War 
his ability as a general, he would, I believe, to- 
day be ranked as one of America's greatest 
fighting men. 

And because the people of his own day de- 
stroyed him is no reason that we should with- 
hold from this American, the greatest of all 
filibusters, the recognition of his genius. 



190 



VI 

MAJOR BURNHAM, CHIEF OF SCOUTS 

AMONG the Soldiers of Fortune whose 
stories have been told in this book were 
men who are no longer living, men who, to 
the United States, were strangers, and men 
who were of interest chiefly because in what 
they attempted, they failed. 

The subject of this article is none of these. 
His adventures are as remarkable as any that 
ever led a small boy to dig behind the barn 
for buried treasure, or stalk Indians in the 
orchard. But entirely apart from his adven- 
tures he obtains our interest because in what 
he has attempted he has not failed, because 
he is one of our own people, one of the earliest 
and best types of American, and because, so 
far from being dead and buried, he is at this 
moment very much alive, and engaged in 

Mexico in searching for a buried city. For 

191 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

exercise, he is alternately chasing, or being 
chased by, Yaqui Indians. 

In his home in Pasadena, Cal., where 
sometimes he rests quietly for almost a 
week at a time, the neighbors know him as 
" Fred " Burnham. In England the news- 
papers crowned him " The King of Scouts." 
Later, when he won an official title, they 
called him " Major Frederick Russell Burn- 
ham, D. S. O." 

Some men are born scouts, others by train- 
ing become scouts. From his father Burn- 
ham inherited his instinct for woodcraft, and 
to this instinct, which in him is as keen as in 
a wild deer or a mountain lion, he has added, 
in the jungle and on the prairie and mountain 
ranges, years of the hardest, most relentless 
schooling. In those years he has trained him- 
self to endure the most appalling fatigues, 
hunger, thirst, and wounds; has subdued the 
brain to infinite patience, has learned to force 
every nerve in his body to absolute obedience, 
to still even the beating of his heart. Indeed, 
than Burnham no man of my acquaintance to 
my knowledge has devoted himself to his life's 

work more earnestly, more honestly, and with 

192 



MAJOR BURNHAM 

such single-mindedness of purpose. To him 
scouting is as exact a study as is the piano to 
Paderewski, with the result that to-day what 
the Pole is to other pianists, the American is 
to all other " trackers," woodmen, and scouts. 
He reads "the face of Nature" as you read 
your morning paper. To him a movement of 
his horse's ears is as plain a warning as the 
" Go Slow " of an automobile sign ; and he so 
saves from ambush an entire troop. In the 
glitter of a piece of quartz in the firelight he 
discovers King Solomon's mines. Like the 
horned cattle he can tell by the smell of it in 
the air the near presence of water, and where, 
glaring in the sun, you can see only a bare 
kopje, he distinguishes the muzzle of a pom- 
pom, the crown of a Boer sombrero, the lev- 
elled barrel of a Mauser. He is the Sherlock 
Holmes of all out of doors. 

Besides being a scout he is soldier, hunter, 
mining expert, and explorer. Within the last 
ten years the educated instinct that as a young- 
er man taught him to follow the trail of an 
Indian, or the " spoor " of the Kaffir and the 
trek wagon, now leads him as a mining expert 
to the hiding places of copper, silver, and gold, 

193 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

and as he advises, great and wealthy syndi- 
cates buy or refuse tracts of land in Africa 
and Mexico as large as the State of New York. 
As an explorer in the last few years in the 
course of his expeditions into undiscovered 
lands, he has added to this little world many 
thousands of square miles. 

Personally Burnham is as unlike the scout 
of fiction, and of the Wild West Show, as it is 
possible for a man to be. He possesses no 
flowing locks, his talk is not of " greasers," 
" grizzly b'ars," or " pesky redskins." In 
fact, because he is more widely and more 
thoroughly informed, he is much better edu- 
cated than many who have passed through one 
of the " Big Three " universities, and his Eng- 
lish is as conventional as though he had been 
brought up on the borders of Boston Common, 
rather than on the borders of civilization. 

In appearance he is slight, muscular, 
bronzed; with a finely formed square jaw, and 
remarkable light blue eyes. These eyes ap- 
parently never leave yours, but in reality they 
see everything behind you and about you, 
above and below you. They tell of him that 

one day, while out with a patrol on the veldt, 

194 



MAJOR BURNHAM 

he said he had lost the trail, and dismounting 
began moving about on his hands and knees, 
nosing the ground like a blood-hound, and 
pointing out a trail that led back over the way 
the force had just marched. When the com- 
manding officer rode up, Burnham said: 

" Don't raise your head, sir. On that kopje 
to the right there is a commando of Boers. " 

"When did you see them?" asked the 
officer. 

" I see them now," Burnham answered. 

" But I thought you were looking for a lost 
trail?" 

" That's what the Boers on the kopje think," 
said Burnham. 

In his eyes, possibly, owing to the uses to 
which they have been trained, the pupils, as 
in the eyes of animals that see in the dark, are 
extremely small. Even in the photographs 
that accompany this article this feature of his 
eyes is obvious, and that he can see in the dark 
the Kaffirs of South Africa firmly believe. In 
manner he is quiet, courteous, talking slowly 
but well, and, while without any of that shy- 
ness that comes from self-consciousness, ex- 
tremely modest. Indeed, there could be no 

195 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

better proof of his modesty than the difficulties 
I have encountered in gathering material for 
this article, which I have been five years in col- 
lecting. And even now as he reads it by his 
camp-fire, I can see him squirm with embar- 
rassment. 

Burnham's father was a pioneer mission- 
ary in a frontier hamlet called Tivoli on the 
edge of the Indian reserve of Minnesota. He 
was a stern, severely religious man, born in 
Kentucky, but educated in New York, where 
he graduated from the Union Theological 
Seminary. He was wonderfully skilled in 
woodcraft. Burnham's mother was a Miss 
Rebecca Russell of a well-known family in 
Iowa. She was a woman of great courage, 
which, in those days on that skirmish line of 
civilization, was a very necessary virtue; and 
she was possessed of a most gentle and sweet 
disposition. That was her gift to her son 
Fred, who was born on May 1 1, 1861. 

His education as a child consisted in memo- 
rizing many verses of the Bible, the " Three 
Rs," and woodcraft. His childhood was 
strenuous. In his mother's arms he saw the 

burning of the town of New Ulm, which was 

196 



MAJOR BURNHAM 

the funeral pyre for the women and children 
of that place when they were massacred by 
Red Cloud and his braves. 

On another occasion Fred's mother fled for 
her life from the Indians, carrying the boy 
with her. He was a husky lad, and knowing 
that if she tried to carry him farther they both 
would be overtaken, she hid him under a shock 
of corn. There, the next morning, the Indians 
having been driven off, she found her son 
sleeping as soundly as a night watchman. In 
these Indian wars, and the Civil War which 
followed, of the families of Burnham and Rus- 
sell, twenty-two of the men were killed. There 
is no question that Burnham comes of fighting 
stock. 

In 1870, when Fred was nine years old, his 

father moved to Los Angeles, Cal., where two 

years later he died; and for a time for both 

mother and boy there was poverty, hard and 

grinding. To relieve this young Burnham 

acted as a mounted messenger. Often he was 

in the saddle from twelve to fifteen hours, and 

even in a land where every one rode well, he 

gained local fame as a hard rider. In a few 

years a kind uncle offered to Mrs. Burnham 

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REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

and a younger brother a home in the East, 
but at the last moment Fred refused to go 
with them, and chose to make his own way. 
He was then thirteen years old, and he had 
determined to be a scout. 

At that particular age many boys have set 
forth determined to be scouts, and are gener- 
ally brought home the next morning by a 
policeman. But Burnham, having turned his 
back on the cities, did not repent. He wan- 
dered over Mexico, Arizona, California. He 
met Indians, bandits, prospectors, hunters of 
all kinds of big game ; and finally a scout who, 
under General Taylor, had served in the Mex- 
ican War. This man took a liking to the boy ; 
and his influence upon him was marked and 
for his good. He was an educated man, and 
had carried into the wilderness a few books. 
In the cabin of this man Burnham read " The 
Conquest of Mexico and Peru," by Prescott, 
the lives of Hannibal and Cyrus the Great, of 
Livingstone, the explorer, which first set his 
thoughts toward Africa, and many technical 
works on the strategy and tactics of war. He 
had no experience of military operations on a 
large scale, but, with the aid of the veteran of 

1 98 



MAJOR BURNHAM 

the Mexican War, with corn-cobs in the sand 
in front of the cabin door, he constructed forts 
and made trenches, redoubts, and traverses. 
In Burnham's life this seems to have been a 
very happy period. The big game he hunted 
and killed he sold for a few dollars to the men 
of Nadean's freight outfits, which in those 
days hauled bullion from Cerro Gordo for the 
man who is now Senator Jones of Nevada. 

At nineteen Burnham decided that there 
were things in this world he should know that 
could not be gleaned from the earth, trees, and 
sky; and with the few dollars he had saved he 
came East. The visit apparently was not a 
success. The atmosphere of the town in which 
he went to school was strictly Puritanical, and 
the townspeople much given to religious dis- 
cussion. The son of the pioneer missionary 
found himself unable to subscribe to the for- 
mulas which to the others seemed so essen- 
tial, and he returned to the West with the 
most bitter feelings, which lasted until he was 
twenty-one. 

" It seems strange now," he once said to me, 

"but in those times religious questions were 

as much a part of our daily life as to-day are 

199 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

automobiles, the Standard Oil and the insur- 
ance scandals, and when I went West I was 
in an unhappy, doubting frame of mind. The 
trouble was I had no moral anchors; the old 
ones father had given me were gone, and the 
time for acquiring new ones had not arrived." 
This bitterness of heart, or this disappoint- 
ment, or whatever the state of mind was that 
the dogmas of the New England town had in- 
spired in the boy from the prairie, made him 
reckless. For the life he was to lead this was 
not a handicap. Even as a lad, in a land-grant 
war in California, he had been under gunfire, 
and for the next fifteen years he led a life of 
danger and of daring; and studied in a school 
of experience than which, for a scout, if his 
life be spared, there can be none better. Burn- 
ham came out of it a quiet, manly, gentle man. 
In those fifteen years he roved the West from 
the Great Divide to Mexico. He fought the 
Apache Indians for the possession of water- 
holes, he guarded bullion on stage-coaches, for 
days rode in pursuit of Mexican bandits and 
American horse thieves, took part in county- 
seat fights, ill rustler wars, in cattle wars ; he 
was cowboy, miner, deputy-sheriff, and in time 



MAJOR BURNHAM 

throughout the West the name of " Fred " 
Burnham became significant and familiar. 

During this period Burnham was true to his 
boyhood ideal of becoming a scout. It was not 
enough that by merely living the life around 
him he was being educated for it. He daily 
practised and rehearsed those things which 
some day might mean to himself and others 
the difference between life and death. To im- 
prove his sense of smell he gave up smoking, 
of which he was extremely fond, nor, for the 
same reason, does he to this day use tobacco. 
He accustomed himself also to go with little 
sleep, and to subsist on the least possible quan- 
tity of food. As a deputy-sheriff this edu- 
cated faculty of not requiring sleep aided him 
in many important captures. Sometimes he 
would not strike the trail of the bandit or " bad 
man " until the other had several days the start 
of him. But the end was the same ; for, while 
the murderer snatched a few hours' rest by the 
trail, Burnham, awake and in the saddle, would 
be closing up the miles between them. 

That he is a good marksman goes without 
telling. At the age of eight his father gave 
him a rifle of his own, and at twelve, with 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

either a " gun " or a Winchester, he was an 
expert. He taught himself to use a weapon 
either in his left or right hand and to shoot, 
Indian fashion, hanging by one leg from his 
pony and using it as a cover, and to turn in 
the saddle and shoot behind him. I once asked 
him if he really could shoot to the rear with a 
galloping horse under him and hit a man. 

" Well," he said, " maybe not to hit him, 
but I can come near enough to him to make 
him decide my pony's so much faster than 
his that it really isn't worth while to fol- 
low me." 

Besides perfecting himself in what he tol- 
erantly calls " tricks " of horsemanship and 
marksmanship, he studied the signs of the trail, 
forest and prairie, as a sailing-master studies 
the waves and clouds. The knowledge he gath- 
ers from inanimate objects and dumb animals 
seems little less than miraculous. And when 
you ask him how he knows these things he 
always gives you a reason founded on some 
fact or habit of nature that shows him to be 
a naturalist, mineralogist, geologist, and bot- 
anist, and not merely a seventh son of a 

seventh son. 

202 



MAJOR BURNHAM 

In South Africa he would say to the officers : 
" There are a dozen Boers five miles ahead of 
us riding Basuto ponies at a trot, and leading 
five others. If we hurry we should be able to 
sight them in an hour." At first the officers 
would smile, but not after a half-hour's gallop, 
when they would see ahead of them a dozen 
Boers leading five ponies. In the early days 
of Salem, Burnham would have been burned 
as a witch. 

When twenty-three years of age he married 
Miss Blanche Blick of Iowa. They had known 
each other from childhood, and her brothers- 
in-law have been Burnham' s aids and compan- 
ions in every part of Africa and the West. 
Neither at the time of their marriage nor since 
did Mrs. Burnham " lay a hand on the bridle 
rein/' as is witnessed by the fact that for nine 
years after his marriage Burnham continued 
his career as sheriff, scout, mining prospector. 
And in 1893, when Burnham and his brother- 
in-law, Ingram, started for South Africa, Mrs. 
Burnham went with them, and in every part 
of South Africa shared her husband's life of 
travel and danger. 

In making this move across the sea, Burn- 
203 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

ham's original idea was to look for gold in 
the territory owned by the German East Afri- 
can Company. But as in Rhodesia the first 
Matabele uprising had broken out, he con- 
tinued on down the coast, and volunteered for 
that campaign. This was the real beginning 
of his fortunes. The " war " was not unlike 
the Indian fighting of his early days, and al- 
though the country was new to him, with the 
kind of warfare then being waged between the 
Kaffirs under King Lobengula and the white 
settlers of the British South Africa Company, 
the chartered company of Cecil Rhodes, he 
was intimately familiar. 

It does not take big men long to recognize 
other big men, and Burnham's remarkable 
work as a scout at once brought him to the 
notice of Rhodes and Dr. Jameson, who was 
personally conducting the campaign. The war 
was their own private war, and to them, at 
such a crisis in the history of their settlement, 
a man like Burnham was invaluable. 

The chief incident of this campaign, the 
fame of which rang over all Great Britain and 
her colonies, was the gallant but hopeless stand 

made by Major Alan Wilson and his patrol of 

204 



MAJOR BURNHAM 

thirty-four men. It was Burnham's attempt 
to save these men that made him known from 
Buluwayo to Cape Town. 

King Lobengula and his warriors were 
halted on one bank of the Shangani River and 
on the other Major Forbes, with a picked force 
of three hundred men, was coming up in pur- 
suit. Although at the moment he did not 
know it, he also was being pursued by a force 
of Matabeles, who were gradually surround- 
ing him. At nightfall Major Wilson and a 
patrol of twelve men, with Burnham and his 
brother-in-law, Ingram, acting as scouts, were 
ordered to make a dash into the camp of Lo- 
bengula and, if possible, in the confusion of 
their sudden attack, and under cover of a ter- 
rific thunder-storm that was raging, bring him 
back a prisoner. 

With the king in their hands the white men 

believed the rebellion would collapse. To the 

number of three thousand the Matabeles were 

sleeping in a succession of camps, through 

which the fourteen men rode at a gallop. But 

in the darkness it was difficult to distinguish 

the trek wagon of the king, and by the time 

they found his laager the Matabeles from the 

205 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

other camps through which they had ridden 
had given the alarm. Through the under- 
brush from every side the enemy, armed with 
assegai and elephant guns, charged toward 
them and spread out to cut off their re- 
treat. 

At a distance of about seven hundred yards 
from the camps there was a giant ant-hill, and 
the patrol rode toward it. By the aid of the 
lightning flashes they made their way through 
a dripping wood and over soil which the rain 
had turned into thick, black mud. When the 
party drew rein at the ant-hill it was found 
that of the fourteen three were missing. As 
the official scout of the patrol and the only one 
who could see in the dark, Wilson ordered 
Burnham back to find them. Burnham said 
he could do so only by feeling the hoof-prints 
in the mud and that he would like some one 
with him to lead his pony. Wilson said he 
would lead it. With his fingers Burnham fol- 
lowed the trail of the eleven horses to where, 
at right angles, the hoof-prints of the three 
others separated from it, and so came upon 
the three men. Still, with nothing but the 
mud of the jungle to guide him, he brought 



MAJOR BURNHAM 

them back to their comrades. It was this feat 
that established his reputation among British, 
Boers, and black men in South Africa. 

Throughout the night the men of the patrol 
lay in the mud holding the reins of their 
horses. In the jungle about them, they could 
hear the enemy splashing through the mud, 
and the swishing sound of the branches as 
they swept back into place. It was still rain- 
ing. Just before the dawn there came the 
sounds of voices and the welcome clatter of 
accoutrements. The men of the patrol, be- 
lieving the column had joined them, sprang up 
rejoicing, but it was only a second patrol, un- 
der Captain Borrow, who had been sent for- 
ward with twenty men as reinforcements. 
They had come in time to share in a glorious 
immortality. No sooner had these men joined 
than the Kaffirs began the attack; and the 
white men at once learned that they were 
trapped in a complete circle of the enemy. 
Hidden by the trees, the Kaffirs fired point- 
blank, and in a very little time half of Wilson's 
force was killed or wounded. As the horses 
were shot down the men used them for breast- 
works. There was no other shelter. Wilson 

207 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

called Burnham to him and told him he must 
try and get through the lines of the enemy to 
Forbes. 

" Tell him to com ; up at once," he said ; " we 
are nearly finished." He detailed a trooper 
named Gooding and Ingram to accompany 
Burnham. " One of you may get through," 
he said. Gooding was but lately out from 
London, and knew nothing of scouting, so 
Burnham and Ingram warned him, whether 
he saw the reason for it or not, to act exactly 
as they did. The three men had barely left 
the others before the enemy sprang at them 
with their spears. In five minutes they were 
being fired at from every bush. Then fol- 
lowed a remarkable ride, in which Burnham 
called to his aid all he had learned in thirty 
years of border warfare. As the enemy 
rushed after them, the three doubled on their 
tracks, rode in triple loops, hid in dongas to 
breathe their horses; and to scatter their pur- 
suers, separated, joined again, and again sepa- 
rated. The enemy followed them to the very 
bank of the river, where, finding the "drift w 
covered with the swollen waters, they wore 

forced to swim. They reached the other bank 

208 



MAJOR BURNHAM 

only to find Forbes hotly engaged with another 
force of the Matabeles. 

" I have been sent for reinforcements," 
Burnham said to Forbes, " but I believe we 
are the only survivors of that party." Forbes 
himself was too hard pressed to give help to 
Wilson, and Burnham, his errand over, took 
his place in the column, and began firing upon 
the new enemy. 

Six weeks later the bodies of Wilson's patrol 
were found lying in a circle. Each of them 
had been shot many times. A son of Loben- 
gula, who witnessed their extermination, and 
who in Buluwayo had often heard the English- 
men sing their national anthem, told how the 
five men who were the last to die stood up and, 
swinging their hats defiantly, sang " God Save 
the Queen." The incident will long be re- 
corded in song and story; and in London was 
reproduced in two theatres, in each of which 
the man who played " Burnham, the American 
Scout," as he rode off for reinforcements, was 
as loudly cheered by those in the audience as 
by those on the stage. 

Hensman, in his " History of Rhodesia," 

says : " One hardly knows which to most ad- 

209 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

mire, the men who went on this dangerous 
errand, through brush swarming with natives, 
or those who remained behind battling against 
overwhelming odds." 

For his help in this war the Chartered Com- 
pany presented Burnham with the campaign 
medal, a gold watch engraved with words of 
appreciation; and at the suggestion of Cecil 
Rhodes gave him, Ingram, and the Hon. Mau- 
rice Clifford, jointly, a tract of land of three 
hundred square acres. 

After this campaign Burnham led an expe- 
dition of ten white men and seventy Kaffirs 
north of the Zambesi River to explore Ba- 
rotzeland and other regions to the north of 
Mashonaland, and to establish the boundaries 
of the concession given him, Ingram, and 
Clifford. 

In order to protect Burnham on the march 
the Chartered Company signed a treaty with 
the native king of the country through which 
he wished to travel, by which the king gave 
him permission to pass freely and guaranteed 
him against attack. 

But Latea, the son of the king, refused to 
recognize the treaty and sent his young men 

210 



MAJOR BURNHAM 

in great number to surround Burnham's camp. 
Burnham had been instructed to avoid a fight, 
and was torn between his desire to obey the 
Chartered Company and to prevent a massacre. 
He decided to make it a sacrifice either of him- 
self or of Latea. As soon as night fell, with 
only three companions and a missionary to 
act as a witness of what occurred, he slipped 
through the lines of Latea's men, and, kicking 
down the fence around the prince's hut, sud- 
denly appeared before him and covered him 
with his rifle. 

" Is it peace or war ? " Burnham asked. " I 
have the king your father's guarantee of pro- 
tection, but your men surround us. I have 
told my people if they hear shots to open fire. 
We may all be killed, but you will be the first 
to die." 

The missionary also spoke urging Latea to 
abide by the treaty. Burnham says the prince 
seemed much more impressed by the argu- 
ments of the missionary than by the fact that 
he still was covered by Burnham's rifle. 
Whichever argument moved him, he called off 
his warriors. On this expedition Burnham 
discovered the ruins of great granite struct- 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

ures fifteen feet wide, and made entirely with- 
out mortar. They were of a period dating 
before the Phoenicians. He also sought out 
the ruins described to him by F. C. Selous, the 
famous hunter, and by Rider Haggard as 
King Solomon's Mines. Much to the delight 
of Mr. Haggard, he brought back for him 
from the mines of his imagination real gold 
ornaments and a real gold bar. 

On this same expedition, which lasted five 
months, Burnham endured one of the severest 
hardships of his life. Alone with ten Kaffir 
boys, he started on a week's journey across 
the dried-up basin of what once had been a 
great lake. Water was carried in goat-skins 
on the heads of the bearers. The boys, find- 
ing the bags an unwieldy burden, and believ- 
ing, with the happy optimism of their race, 
that Burnham's warnings were needless, and 
that at a stream they soon could refill the bags, 
emptied the water on the ground. 

The tortures that followed this wanton 
waste were terrible. Five of the boys died. 
and after several days, when Burnham found 
water in abundance, the tongues of the others 
were so swollen that their jaws could not meet. 



MAJOR BURNHAM 

On this trip Burnham passed through a 
region ravaged by the " sleeping sickness/' 
where his nostrils were never free from the 
stench of dead bodies, where in some of the 
villages, as he expressed it, " the hyenas were 
mangy with overeating, and the buzzards so 
gorged they could not move out of our way." 
From this expedition he brought back many 
ornaments of gold manufactured before the 
Christian era, and made several valuable maps 
of hitherto uncharted regions. It was in rec- 
ognition of the information gathered by him 
on this trip that he was elected a Fellow of the 
Royal Geographical Society. 

He returned to Rhodesia in time to take 
part in the second Matabele rebellion. This 
was in 1896. By now Burnham was a very 
prominent member of the " vortrekers " and 
pioneers at Buluwayo, and Sir Frederick Car- 
rington, who was in command of the forces, 
attached him to his staff. This second out- 
break was a more serious uprising than the 
one of 1893, an d as it was evident the forces 
of the Chartered Company could not handle it, 
imperial troops were sent to assist them. But 

with even their aid the war dragged on until 

213 



HEAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

it threatened to last to the rainy season, when 
the troops must have gone into winter quar- 
ters. Had they done so, the cost of keeping 
them would have fallen on the Chartered Com- 
pany, already a sufferer in pocket from the 
ravages of the rinderpest and the expenses of 
the investigation which followed the Jameson 
raid. 

Accordingly, Carrington looked about for 
some measure by which he could bring the 
war to an immediate end. 

It was suggested to him by a young Colo- 
nial, named Armstrong, the Commissioner of 
the district, that this could be done by de- 
stroying the " god," or high priest, Um- 
limo, who was the chief inspiration of the 
rebellion. 

This high priest had incited the rebels to a 
general massacre of women and children, and 
had given them confidence by promising to 
strike the white soldiers blind and to turn their 
bullets into water. Armstrong had discovered 
the secret hiding-place of Umlimo, and Car- 
rington ordered Burnham to penetrate the ene- 
my's lines, find the god, capture him, and it 
that were not possible to destroy him. 

214 



MAJOR BURNHAM 

The adventure was a most desperate one. 
Umlimo was secreted in a cave on the top of 
a huge kopje. At the base of this was a vil- 
lage where were gathered two regiments, of 
a thousand men each, of his fighting men. 

For miles around this village the country 
was patrolled by roving bands of the enemy. 

Against a white man reaching the cave and 
returning, the chances were a hundred to one, 
and the difficulties of the journey are illus- 
trated by the fact that Burnham and Arm- 
strong were unable to move faster than at the 
rate of a mile an hour. In making the last 
mile they consumed three hours. When they 
reached the base of the kopje in which Umlimo 
was hiding, they concealed their ponies in a 
clump of bushes, and on hands and knees 
began the ascent. 

Directly below them lay the village, so close 
that they could smell the odors of cooking 
from the huts, and hear, rising drowsily on 
the hot, noonday air, voices of the warriors. 
For minutes at a time they lay as motionless 
as the granite bowlders around or squirmed 
and crawled over loose stones which a miss of 
hand or knee would have dislodged and sent 

215 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

clattering into the village. After an hour 
of this tortuous climbing the cave suddenly 
opened before them, and they beheld Umlimo. 
Burnham recognized that to take him alive 
from his stronghold was an impossibility, and 
that even they themselves would leave the 
place w T as equally doubtful. So, obeying or- 
ders, he fired, killing the man who had boasted 
he would turn the bullets of his enemies into 
water. The echo of the shot aroused the vil- 
lage as would a stone hurled into an ant-heap. 
In an instant the veldt below was black with 
running men, and as, concealment being no 
longer possible, the white men rose to fly a 
great shout of anger told them they were dis- 
covered. At the same moment two women, 
returning from a stream where they had gone 
for water, saw the ponies, and ran screaming 
to give the alarm. The race that followed 
lasted two hours, for so quickly did the Kaffirs 
spread out on every side that it was impossible 
for Burnham to gain ground in any one direc- 
tion, and he was forced to dodge, turn, and 
double. At one time the white men were 
driven back to the very kopje from which the 
race had started. 

2l6 



MAJOR BURNHAM 

But in the end they evaded assegai and gun- 
fire, and in safety reached Buluwayo. This 
exploit was one of the chief factors in bring- 
ing the war to a close. The Matabeles, finding 
their leader was only a mortal like themselves, 
and so could not, as he had promised, bring 
miracles to their aid, lost heart, and when 
Cecil Rhodes in person made overtures of 
peace, his terms were accepted. During the 
hard days of the siege, when rations were few 
and bad, Burnham's little girl, who had been 
the first white child born in Buluwayo, died 
of fever and lack of proper food. This with 
other causes led him to leave Rhodesia and 
return to California. It is possible he then 
thought he had forever turned his back on 
South Africa, but, though he himself had 
departed, the impression he had made there 
remained behind him. 

Burnham did not rest long in California. 

In Alaska the hunt for gold had just begun, 

and, the old restlessness seizing him, he left 

Pasadena and her blue skies, tropical plants, 

and trolley-car strikes for the new raw land 

of the Klondike. 

With Burnham it has always been the place 
217 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

that is being made, not the place in being, that 
attracts. He has helped to make straight the 
ways of several great communities — Arizona, 
California, Rhodesia, Alaska, and Uganda. 
As he once said : " It is the constructive side 
of frontier life that most appeals to me, the 
building up of a country, where you see the 
persistent drive and force of the white man; 
when the place is finally settled I don't seem 
to enjoy it very long." 

In Alaska he did much prospecting, and, 
with a sled and only two dogs, for twenty-four 
days made one long fight against snow and 
ice, covering six hundred miles. In mining 
in Alaska he succeeded well, but against the 
country he holds a constant grudge, because it 
kept him out of the fight with Spain. When 
war was declared he was in the wilds and knew 
nothing of it, and though on his return to 
civilization he telegraphed Colonel Roosevelt 
volunteering for the Rough Riders, and at 
once started south, by the time he had reached 
Seattle the war was over. 

Several times has he spoken to me of how 

bitterly he regretted missing this chance to 

officially fight for his country. That he had 

218 



MAJOR BURNHAM 

twice served with English forces made him the 
more keen to show his loyalty to his own 
people. 

That he would have been given a commis- 
sion in the Rough Riders seems evident from 
the opinion President Roosevelt has publicly 
expressed of him. 

" I know Burnham," the President wrote in 
1 90 1. " He is a scout and a hunter of courage 
and ability, a man totally without fear, a sure 
shot, and a fighter. He is the ideal scout, and 
when enlisted in the military service of any 
country he is bound to be of the greatest 
benefit." 

The truth of this Burnham was soon to 
prove. 

In 1899 he had returned to the Klondike, 
and in January of 1900 had been six months 
in Skagway. In that same month Lord Rob- 
erts sailed for Cape Town to take command 
of the army, and with him on his staff was 
Burnham's former commander, Sir Frederick, 
now Lord, Carrington. One night as the ship 
was in the Bay of Biscay, Carrington was 
talking of Burnham and giving instances of 

his marvellous powers as a " tracker." 

219 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

" He is the best scout we ever had in South 
Africa ! " Carrington declared. 

" Then why don't we get him back there? " 
said Roberts. 

What followed is well known. 

From Gibraltar a cable was sent to Skag- 
way, offering Burnham the position, created 
especially for him, of chief of scouts of the 
British army in the field. 

Probably never before in the history of wars 
has one nation paid so pleasant a tribute to the 
abilities of a man of another nation. 

The sequel is interesting. The cablegram 
reached Skagway by the steamer City of Seat- 
tle. The purser left it at the post-office, and 
until two hours and a half before the steamer 
was listed to start on her return trip, there it 
lay. Then Burnham, in asking for his mail, 
received it. In two hours and a half he had 
his family, himself, and his belongings on 
board the steamer, and had started on his half- 
around-the-world journey from Alaska to Cape 
Town. 

A Skagway paper of January 5, 1900, pub- 
lished the day after Burnham sailed, throw 
side light on his character. After telling of 



MAJOR BURNHAM 

his hasty departure the day before, and of the 
high compliment that had been paid to " a 
prominent Skagwayan," it adds : " Although 
Mr. Burnham has lived in Skagway since last 
August, and has been North for many months, 
he has said little of his past, and few have 
known that he is the man famous over the 
world as * the American scout ' of the Mata- 
bele wars." 

Many a man who went to the Klondike did 
not, for reasons best known to himself, talk 
about his past. But it is characteristic of 
Burnham that, though he lived there two 
years, his associates did not know, until the 
British Government snatched him from among 
them, that he had not always been a prospector 
like themselves. 

I was on the same ship that carried Burn- 
ham the latter half of his journey, from South- 
ampton to Cape Town, and every night for 
seventeen nights was one of a group of men 
who shot questions at him. And it was inter- 
esting to see a fellow-countryman one had 
heard praised so highly so completely make 
good. It was not as though he had a credu- 
lous audience of commercial tourists. Among 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

the officers who each evening gathered around 
him were Colonel Gallilet of the Egyptian cav- 
alry, Captain Frazer commanding the Scotch 
Gillies, Captain Mackie of Lord Roberts's 
staff, each of whom was later killed in action ; 
Colonel Sir Charles Hunter of the Royal 
Rifles, Major Bagot, Major Lord Dudley, and 
Captain Lord Valentia. Each of these had 
either held command in border fights in India 
or the Sudan or had hunted big game, and the 
questions each asked were the outcome of his 
own experience and observation. 

Not for a single evening could a faker have 
submitted to the midnight examination through 
which they put Burnham and not have exposed 
his ignorance. They wanted to know what 
difference there is in a column of dust raised 
by cavalry and by trek wagons, how to tell 
whether a horse that has passed was going at 
a trot or a gallop, the way to throw a diamond 
hitch, how to make a fire without at the same 
time making a target of yourself, how — why — 
what — and how? 

And what made us most admire Burnham 
was that when he did not know he at once 
said so. 

222 



MAJOR BURNHAM 

Within two nights he had us so absolutely 
at his mercy that we would have followed him 
anywhere; anything he chose to tell us, we 
would have accepted. We were ready to be- 
lieve in flying foxes, flying squirrels, that wild 
turkeys dance quadrilles — even that you must 
never sleep in the moonlight. Had he de- 
manded : " Do you believe in vampires ? " we 
would have shouted " Yes." To ask that a 
scout should on an ocean steamer prove his 
ability was certainly placing him under a se- 
vere handicap. 

As one of the British officers said: "It's 
about as fair a game as though we planted 
the captain of this ship in the Sahara Desert, 
and told him to prove he could run a ten- 
thousand-ton liner." 

Burnham continued with Lord Roberts to 
the fall of Pretoria, when he was invalided 
home. 

During the advance north he was a hundred 
times inside the Boer laagers, keeping Head- 
quarters Staff daily informed of the enemy's 
movements; was twice captured and twice 
escaped. 

He was first captured while trying to warn 
223 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

the British from the fatal drift at Thaba'nchu. 
When reconnoitring alone in the morning 
mist he came upon the Boers hiding on the 
banks of the river, toward which the English 
were even then advancing. The Boers were 
moving all about him, and cut him off from 
his own side. He had to choose between aban- 
doning the English to the trap or signalling 
to them, and so exposing himself to capture. 
With the red kerchief the scouts carried for 
that purpose, he wigwagged to the approach- 
ing soldiers to turn back, that the enemy were 
awaiting them. But the column, which was 
without an advance guard, paid no attention 
to his signals and plodded steadily on into the 
ambush, while Burnham was at once made 
prisoner. In the fight that followed he pre- 
tended to receive a wound in the knee and 
bound it so elaborately that not even a surgeon 
would have disturbed the carefully arranged 
bandages. Limping heavily and groaning with 
pain, he was placed in a trek wagon with the 
officers who really were wounded, and who. in 
consequence, were not closely guarded. Burn- 
ham told them who he was and. as he intended 

to escape, offered to take back to head-quarters 

2:4 



MAJOR BURNHAM 

their names or any messages they might wish 
to send to their people. As twenty yards be- 
hind the wagon in which they lay was a 
mounted guard, the officers told him escape 
was impossible. He proved otherwise. The 
trek wagon was drawn by sixteen oxen and 
driven by a Kaffir boy. Later in the evening, 
but while it still was moonlight, the boy de- 
scended from his seat and ran forward to be- 
labor the first spans of oxen. This was the 
opportunity for which Burnham had been 
waiting. 

Slipping quickly over the driver's seat, he 
dropped between the two " wheelers " to the 
disselboom, or tongue, of the trek wagon. 
From this he lowered himself and fell between 
the legs of the oxen on his back in the road. 
In an instant the body of the wagon had 
passed over him, and while the dust still 
hung above the trail he rolled rapidly over 
into the ditch at the side of the road and lay 
motionless. 

It was four days before he was able to re- 
enter the British lines, during which time 
he had been lying in the open veldt, and 

had subsisted on one biscuit and two hand- 

225 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

fuls of " mealies," or what we call Indian 
corn. 

Another time when out scouting he and his 
Kaffir boy while on foot were " jumped " by 
a Boer commando and forced to hide in two 
great ant-hills. The Boers went into camp on 
every side of them, and for two days, unknown 
to themselves, held Burnham a prisoner. Only 
at night did he and the Cape boy dare to crawl 
out to breathe fresh air and to eat the food 
tablets they carried in their pockets. On five 
occasions was Burnham sent into the Boer 
lines with dynamite cartridges to blow up the 
railroad over which the enemy was receiving 
supplies and ammunition. One of these expe- 
ditions nearly ended his life. 

On June 2, 1901, while trying by night to 
blow up the line between Pretoria and Delagoa 
Bay, he was surrounded by a party of Boers 
and could save himself only by instant flight. 
He threw himself Indian fashion along the 
back of his pony, and had all but got away 
when a bullet caught the horse and, without 
even faltering in its stride, it crashed to the 
ground dead, crushing Burnham beneath it 
and knocking him senseless. 1 le continued un- 

226 



MAJOR BURNHAM 

conscious for twenty-four hours, and when he 
came to, both friends and foes had departed. 
Bent upon carrying out his orders, although 
suffering the most acute agony, he crept back 
to the railroad and destroyed it. Knowing the 
explosion would soon bring the Boers, on his 
hands and knees he crept to an empty kraal, 
where for two days and nights he lay insen- 
sible. At the end of that time he appreciated 
that he was sinking and that unless he found 
aid he would die. 

Accordingly, still on his hands and knees, 
he set forth toward the sound of distant firing. 
He was indifferent as to whether it came from 
the enemy or his own people, but, as it chanced, 
he was picked up by a patrol of General Dick- 
son's Brigade, who carried him to Pretoria. 
There the surgeons discovered that in his fall 
he had torn apart the muscles of the stomach 
and burst a blood-vessel. That his life was 
saved, so they informed him, was due only to 
the fact that for three days he had been with- 
out food. Had he attempted to digest the least 
particle of the " staff of life " he would have 
surely died. His injuries were so serious that 

he was ordered home. 

227 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 



On leaving the army he was given such 
hearty thanks and generous rewards as no 
other American ever received from the British 
War Office. He was promoted to the rank of 
major, presented with a large sum of money, 
and from Lord Roberts received a personal 
letter of thanks and appreciation. 

In part the Field-Marshal wrote: "I doubt 
if any other man in the force could have suc- 
cessfully carried out the thrilling enterprises 
in which from time to time you have been en- 
gaged, demanding as they did the training of 
a lifetime, combined with exceptional courage, 
caution, and powers of endurance." On his 
arrival in England he was commanded to dine 
with the Queen and spend the night at Os- 
borne, and a few months later, after her death, 
King Edward created him a member of the 
Distinguished Service Order, and personally 
presented him with the South African medal 
with five bars, and the cross of the D. S. O. 
While recovering his health Burnham, with 
Mrs. Burnham, was " passed on " by friends 
he had made in the army from country house 
to country house: he was made the guest of 

honor at city banquets, with the Duke of Rut- 

228 




From a copyright photograph by lllliott & Fry. 

Major F. R. Burnham. 

Taken on the day the King decorated him with the D.S.O. 
(Distinguished Service Order). 



MAJOR BURNHAM 

land rode after the Belvoir hounds, and in 
Scotland made mild excursions after grouse. 
But after six months of convalescence he 
was of! again, this time to the hinterland of 
Ashanti, on the west coast of Africa, where 
he went in the interests of a syndicate to 
investigate a concession for working gold 
mines. 

With his brother-in-law, J. C. Blick, he 
marched and rowed twelve hundred miles, and 
explored the Volta River, at that date so little 
visited that in one day's journey they counted 
eleven hippopotamuses. In July, 1901, he re- 
turned from Ashanti, and a few months later 
an unknown but enthusiastic admirer asked in 
the House of Commons if it were true Major 
Burnham had applied for the post of Instructor 
of Scouts at Aldershot. There is no such post, 
and Burnham had not applied for any other 
post. To the Times he wrote : " I never have 
thought myself competent to teach Britons 
how to fight, or to act as an instructor with 
officers who have fought in every corner of 
the world. The question asked in Parliament 
was entirely without my knowledge, and I 

deeply regret that it was asked." A few 

229 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

months later, with Mrs. Burnham and his 
younger son, Bruce, he journeyed to East 
Africa as director of the East African Syndi- 
cate. 

During his stay there the African Review 
said of him : " Should East Africa ever be- 
come a possession for England to be proud of, 
she will owe much of her prosperity to the 
brave little band that has faced hardships and 
dangers in discovering her hidden resources. 
Major Burnham has chosen men from Eng- 
land, Ireland, the United States, and South 
Africa for sterling qualities, and they have 
justified his choice. Not the least like a hero 
is the retiring, diffident little major himself, 
though a finer man for a friend or a better 
man to serve under would not be found in the 
five continents. " 

Burnham explored a tract of land larger 

than Germany, penetrating a thousand miles 

through a country, never before visited by 

white men, to the borders of the Congo Basin. 

With him he had twenty white men and five 

hundred natives. The most interesting result 

of the expedition was the discovery of a lake 

forty-nine miles square, composed almost cn- 

230 



MAJOR BURNHAM 

tirely of pure carbonate of soda, forming a 
snowlike crust so thick that on it the men could 
cross the lake. 

It is the largest, and when the railroad 
is built — the Uganda Railroad is now only 
eighty-eight miles distant — it will be the most 
valuable deposit of carbonate of soda ever 
found. 

A year ago, in the interests of John Hays 
Hammond, the distinguished mining engineer 
of South Africa and this country, Burnham 
went to Sonora, Mexico, to find a buried city 
and to open up mines of copper and silver. 

Besides seeking for mines, Hammond and 
Burnham, with Gardner Williams, another 
American who also made his fortune in South 
Africa, are working together on a scheme to 
import to this country at their own expense 
many species of South African deer. 

The South African deer is a hardy animal 

and can live where the American deer cannot, 

and the idea in importing him is to prevent 

big game in this country from passing away. 

They have asked Congress to set aside for 

these animals a portion of the forest reserve. 

Already Congress has voted toward the plan 

231 



REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE 

$15,000, and President Roosevelt is one of its 
most enthusiastic supporters. 

We cannot leave Burnham in better hands 
than those of Hammond and Gardner Will- 
iams. Than these three men the United States 
has not sent to British Africa any Americans 
of whom she has better reason to be proud. 
Such men abroad do for those at home untold 
good. They are the real ambassadors of their 
country. 

The last I learned of Burnham is told in the 
snapshot of him which accompanies this ar- 
ticle, and which shows him, barefoot, in the 
Yaqui River, where he has gone, perhaps, to 
conceal his trail from the Indians. It came a 
month ago in a letter which said briefly that 
when the picture was snapped the expedition 
was " trying to cool off." There his narra- 
tive ended. Promising as it does adventures 
still to come, it seems a good place in which 
to leave him. 

Meanwhile, you may think of Mrs. Burn- 
ham after a year in Mexico keeping the house 
open for her husband's return to Pasadena, 
and of their first son, Roderick, studying wood- 
craft with his father, forestry with Gifford 

232 




Latest Portrait of Burnham. 

Taken this year in Mexico by a member of his expedition along the Yaqui River. 



MAJOR BURNHAM 

Pinchot, and playing right guard on the fresh- 
man team at the University of California. 

But Burnham himself we will leave " cool- 
ing off " in the Yaqui River, maybe, with 
Indians hunting for him along the banks. 
And we need not worry about him. We 
know they will not catch him. 



233 



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